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Richard Stockley

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The Journey

From fourteen articles to a framework

Intent-Driven Development did not arrive fully formed. It was worked out in public, one article at a time, between January and March 2026, right here on this site.

The starting question was simple. As AI, and more specifically agentic AI, takes on more of the execution of software, what is left for humans to do, and how should teams organise around it? The answer that emerged is that the primary human contribution shifts from writing code to governing intent: specifying what should be built, why, and within what boundaries, then holding AI execution accountable to that intent.

Over fourteen articles, that idea grew a vocabulary and a structure: Intent Specifications, Intent Fidelity, Risk Dials, the Intent Hierarchy, Human Gates, the Autonomy Boundary, and a maturity model for adopting it all. Each article tested one part of the argument. Together, they became the foundation of the framework.

Those original fourteen pieces remain published below, exactly as the thinking developed. The complete framework, refined, restructured, and expanded, now lives at intentdrivendevelopment.org, where you can also download the free ebook.

Intent-Driven Development (IDD) - A woman holding a clipboard and marking off whether her human intent has been met by Agentic AI as it builds her vision in software

01

Intent-Driven Development (IDD)

The article that started it all. Naming the methodology and the core shift from writing code to governing intent.

ntent-Driven Development illustration showing UCD, DDD, BDD and TDD converging into IDD, guided by a woman validating intent while AI systems wait to build.

02

How IDD Bridges UCD, DDD, BDD, and TDD in the AI Era

Placing IDD in the lineage of the disciplines that came before it, and showing what it inherits from each.

Pop art illustration showing a businesswoman turning a control dial from manual to fully automated, representing intent-driven development, human-in-the-loop governance, and agentic AI workflow automation in an enterprise setting.

03

Human Gates in Agentic Flows for Enterprise AI Control

Where humans must remain in the loop, and how to design deliberate checkpoints into agentic workflows.

Pop art–style illustration of a professional woman adjusting green, amber, and red risk dials on a dashboard, with an ‘Intent-Driven Development Interface’ layer connecting human intent to interchangeable AI agents below, showing governed, tool-agnostic agentic automation.

04

Why IDD Survives Rapid AI Model Evolution

Why a framework anchored in human intent stays relevant no matter how quickly the underlying models change.

Pop art banner showing a woman adjusting red, amber and green risk dials on an Intent-Driven Development Interface, directing a cute multi-agent robot team with a coordinator, illustrating intent in and software out with interchangeable agents.

05

Intent-Driven Development via Multi-Agent Systems

Applying IDD when execution is delegated not to one agent but to orchestrated systems of them.

Pop art illustration showing a professional woman reviewing intent fidelity metrics while AI systems operate in the background, with risk dials moving from stop to caution to trust, representing measured and governed Intent-Driven Development success.

06

Measuring Intent Fidelity

The measurement question: how closely does what was built match what was intended, and how do you know?

Intent-Driven Development Maturity Model shows a Pop art–style 16:9 banner illustrating “The IDD Maturity Model – Scaling Autonomy Without Losing Control.” A confident professional woman stands in the foreground holding a clipboard, symbolising leadership and oversight. Behind her, a four-level staircase progresses from red to green, labelled “1 Supervised Learning,” “2 Selective Delegation,” “3 Sustained Alignment,” and “4 Continuous Optimisation.” A large risk dial gauge transitions from red to green, marked “Evidence-Gated Progression.” Surrounding elements include checklists, magnifying glasses, gears, a security shield, robotic arm, analytics charts, and upward arrows—representing governance, measurement, autonomy, and enterprise AI maturity.

07

The IDD Maturity Model

A staged path for teams and organisations adopting IDD, from first experiments to embedded practice.

Designing Intent at Scale - How Enterprise Roles Evolve in the Age of AI, Vibrant pop art illustration of a professional red-haired woman reviewing an “Intent Specification” on a clipboard with a magnifying glass. Surrounding her are bright callout labels reading Product, UX, Engineering, QA, Security and Architecture, all connected to the document to show roles feeding into defined intent.

08

Designing Intent at Scale – How Enterprise Roles Evolve in the Age of AI

Lifting the lens from the team to the enterprise, and what happens to roles when intent becomes the unit of work.

Pop-art style illustration of a confident woman pointing toward the viewer, surrounded by labelled panels representing software roles including User-Centred Design, Product Management, UX Design, Software Engineering, Architecture, and QA Testing. The image represents how different enterprise roles contribute to designing intent in AI-driven software development.

09

The New Practitioner

The skills, judgement, and posture of the engineer whose job is now governing intent rather than typing code.

Pop art illustration of a woman examining a diagram of an Intent-Driven Development specification with six sections: Intent, Domain Context, Success Criteria, Validation, Constraints, and Ethical Considerations.

10

How Do You Specify Your Intent?

The practical heart of the framework: what an Intent Specification actually needs to contain.

Pop-art style banner illustration showing a three-level intent hierarchy pyramid labeled Organization Intent, Domain Intent, and Project Intent. Bidirectional arrows between the layers represent intent being inherited downward and promoted upward. A thoughtful woman in comic-book pop-art style appears on the left, with icons representing security, governance, architecture, and compliance around the diagram.

11

The Intent Hierarchy

How intent cascades through Organisation, Domain, and Project levels, and how the layers stay coherent.

Pop-art style illustration of a thoughtful professional woman looking at a circular feedback loop with arrows representing iteration and learning, including icons for execution, measurement hierarchy, and governance, with a speech bubble titled “Intent Evolution & Shaping”

12

Intent Evolution and Intent Shaping

Intent is not static. How specifications evolve, and the discipline of shaping intent as understanding grows.

A pop-art comic style 16:9 banner titled “Intent-Driven Development: The Learning Organization.” On the left side is a vertical hierarchy labeled Organization Intent, Domain Intent, Project Intent, and Execution with a downward arrow labeled Intent showing intent flowing down the organization. On the right side are upward arrows labeled Promotion, Measurement, and Learning representing feedback and organizational learning flowing upward. On the right side of the image is a confident businesswoman with shoulder-length red hair wearing a blazer and looking thoughtfully at the diagram, symbolizing leadership and governance of intent in a learning organization.

13

The Learning Organization

Turning every cycle of intent, execution, and review into organisational learning that compounds.

Pop art style banner showing a confident business woman with shoulder-length red hair representing human roles and intent, with arrows pointing to small robot agents performing functions like coding, testing, deployment, and monitoring, illustrating the concept “Humans have roles, agents have functions

14

Humans Have Roles, Agents Have Functions

The closing distinction of the series: accountability lives with people, capability can live anywhere.

The Outcome

The complete framework, in one place

In April 2026 the fourteen articles were refined, restructured, and expanded into a complete framework with its own home. It includes the full methodology, the glossary of IDD terms, and the free ebook, Intent-Driven Development: Where Human Intent Meets Machine Execution.

If you only visit one link on this page, make it this one.

Visit intentdrivendevelopment.org

Beyond Software

What came next: Human Intent

IDD answers the question for software engineering. But the same principle, govern intent, delegate execution, does not stop at the codebase. The Human Intent series takes the argument to the whole organisation: what happens to structures, roles, and leadership when work is no longer the unit being organised.

Start the Human Intent series →

Human Intent – Organisational Change in the AI Era: the shift from managing work to governing intent.