Chris Williams (@voodootikigod) opens his ADLC series arguing that running the human SDLC on models is a category error: the classic cycle was designed to counter human failure modes (ego, fatigue, forgetting) that are absent in LLMs. He catalogs eight load-bearing failure modes (F1-F8) and five exploitable properties (E1-E5), and lays out the founding principle: every phase of an agentic cycle must trace back to a failure mode it defends against or a property it exploits.
Second installment of Chris Williams's ADLC series: it unrolls the cycle that follows from the "first law" — eight phases (P0 Triage → P7 Distill), a deterministic gate between each pair, and exactly two mandatory human moments (spec approval at P1, behavioral acceptance at P6). Key principle: an LLM→LLM handoff without a deterministic checkpoint multiplies error rates; and a "barbell" cost distribution (heavy at both ends, light in the middle) that inverts agile economics.