Appendix: Agent Lifecycle¶

🧠 Agent Lifecycle Overview¶

This appendix outlines the full governance lifecycle of an AI agent, from design to audit. Dokugent’s CLI supports structured checkpoints across this lifecycle to ensure every agent is built with clear scope, cryptographic trust, and traceable behavior.

🔐 Identity & Trust Layer¶

Component	Description
Agent Identity	Created via `dokugent agent`. Defines the agent’s logical and behavioral identity.
Owner Identity	Created via `dokugent owner`. Declares who is accountable for the agent.
Signer Identity	Created via `dokugent keygen`. Tied to cryptographic signing of agent plans.

🧱 Data Design Pipeline¶

Step	Description
plan	Define intent, data access scope, and goals.
criteria	Declare validation logic and security constraints.
conventions	Enforce project-wide standards and patterns.
JSON Payloads	Inject or extend plans with structured config or metadata via `dokugent byo`.

⚙️ Operational Pipeline¶

Step	Description
preview	Check scope alignment and trust artifacts before proceeding.
certify	Lock the plan with author signature, fingerprint, and trust metadata.
compile	Bundle the full agent payload, ready for deployment or registry inclusion.

🧪 Testing & QA Pipeline¶

Step	Description
dryrun	Test the agent's response in sandboxed environments with no execution side effects.
simulate	Emulate full agent behavior using a selected local or remote LLM runtime.
trace	Fetch historical output, metadata, and provenance logs of a registered agent.

🕵️ Audit & Compliance Pipeline¶

Step	Description
inspect	Load and display full payload, signature chain, and access scope of an agent.
review	Re-verify plan compliance post-deployment or post-incident.
revoke	Invalidate an agent's authority or registry status after a breach or update.

Each stage of this lifecycle is explicitly supported by a CLI command, reducing ambiguity and helping teams reason clearly about agent scope, trust, and risk.