# From Craft to Constitution: A Governance-First Paradigm for Principled Agent Engineering

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.13857 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.13857/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 30 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Oct 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Software engineering coding agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/software-engineering-coding-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 30)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arena](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05685/) (2023)
- [Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contexts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03172/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Hallucination in Large Language Models: Principles, Taxonomy, Challenges, and Open Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.05232/) (2023)
- [The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07864/) (2023)
- [Fantastically Ordered Prompts and Where to Find Them: Overcoming Few-Shot Prompt Order Sensitivity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08786/) (2021)
- [Red Teaming Language Models with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03286/) (2022)
- [DSPy: Compiling Declarative Language Model Calls into Self-Improving Pipelines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03714/) (2023)
- [Can Large Language Models Be an Alternative to Human Evaluations?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.01937/) (2023)
- [A Systematic Survey of Prompt Engineering in Large Language Models: Techniques and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.07927/) (2024)
- [Cognitive Architectures for Language Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.02427/) (2023)
- [TheAgentCompany: Benchmarking LLM Agents on Consequential Real World Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14161/) (2024)
- [From System 1 to System 2: A Survey of Reasoning Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.17419/) (2025)
- [Analysis Methods in Neural Language Processing: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.08951/) (2018)
- [How is ChatGPT's behavior changing over time?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09009/) (2023)
- [Neurosymbolic AI: The 3rd Wave](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05876/) (2020)
- [The Landscape of Emerging AI Agent Architectures for Reasoning, Planning, and Tool Calling: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.11584/) (2024)
- [AI Agents Under Threat: A Survey of Key Security Challenges and Future Pathways](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02630/) (2024)
- [A Survey of Context Engineering for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13334/) (2025)
- [AIOS: LLM Agent Operating System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16971/) (2024)
- [Software Engineering for AI-Based Systems: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.01984/) (2021)
- [Defense Against Prompt Injection Attack by Leveraging Attack Techniques](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00459/) (2024)
- [LLM as OS, Agents as Apps: Envisioning AIOS, Agents and the AIOS-Agent Ecosystem](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03815/) (2023)
- [Towards Trustworthy GUI Agents: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23434/) (2025)
- [Towards Cognitive AI Systems: a Survey and Prospective on Neuro-Symbolic AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01040/) (2024)
- [The Fusion of Large Language Models and Formal Methods for Trustworthy AI Agents: A Roadmap](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06512/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Responsible LLMs: Inherent Risk, Malicious Use, and Mitigation Strategy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.09431/) (2025)
- [Agents Are Not Enough](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16241/) (2024)
- [KAOS: Large Model Multi-Agent Operating System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11342/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Model-Native Computing Architecture: Envisioning Future System Architecture Through the Lens of Computer Architecture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.00288/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The advent of powerful Large Language Models (LLMs) has ushered in an ``Age of the Agent,'' enabling autonomous systems to tackle complex goals. However, the transition from prototype to production is hindered by a pervasive ``crisis of craft,'' resulting in agents that are brittle, unpredictable, and ultimately untrustworthy in mission-critical applications. This paper argues this crisis stems from a fundamental paradigm mismatch -- attempting to command inherently probabilistic processors with the deterministic mental models of traditional software engineering. To solve this crisis, we introduce a governance-first paradigm for principled agent engineering, embodied in a formal architecture we call ArbiterOS.