How the AC/DC framework helps teams govern AI coding agents

The AC/DC (Agent Centric Development Cycle) framework proposes four stages for governing AI coding agents: Guide, Generate, Verify, and Solve. While most attention focuses on code generation, the framework argues that the surrounding layers are what make agentic development trustworthy at scale. Guide provides structured context and boundaries to agents before they start. Verify must happen both during and after generation, catching logic flaws, security issues, and maintainability problems early. A Sonar study found agents working in higher-quality codebases used 7-11% fewer tokens and re-read files 34% less often, suggesting code quality is now an AI infrastructure efficiency variable. Solve closes the loop by turning verification findings into iterative remediation rather than growing backlogs. The core argument is that competitive advantage in agentic development comes not from generating the most code, but from building governance systems that make generated code consistently trustworthy and production-ready.