How to read these patterns
Each card shows an illustrative architecture (flow with policy gates), the engineering it entails, the security considerations, and the intended outcome — all labeled as patterns. No customer names, logos, or results are implied.
Pattern 01Engineering Pattern
Governed RAG Architecture
Governed retrieval over enterprise knowledge with access control, evaluation, and observability.
Sources→Ingestion→Knowledge→Retrieval→Context→Generation→Evaluation→Observation
Sources → Ingestion → Knowledge → Retrieval → Context → Generation → Evaluation → Observation
ENGINEERING
Ingestion and chunking strategy, access-controlled index, ranking and context policy.
SECURITY
Access controls at retrieval, prompt-injection guardrails, audit trail for generation.
OUTCOME
Pattern outcome: grounded answers with audit trail (not a customer metric).
Illustrative Architecture — not a customer case study.
Pattern 02Engineering Pattern
Production Agent Control Plane
Policy-constrained agents with tool contracts, validation, and human escalation.
Goal→Planning→Tools→Execution→Validation→Policy/Human Gate→Outcome
Goal → Planning → Tools → Execution → Validation → Policy/Human Gate → Outcome
ENGINEERING
Tool contracts, permission scopes, validation checks, and traceable execution.
SECURITY
Scoped tool permissions, identity-aware execution, policy gates before side-effects.
OUTCOME
Pattern outcome: controlled execution with clear escalation (not a customer metric).
Illustrative Architecture — not a customer case study.
Pattern 03Engineering Pattern
Immutable Delivery Pipeline
Source to runtime with security gates, artifact integrity, and evidence.
Source→Build→Security→Artifact→Deploy→Runtime→Audit
Source → Build → Security → Artifact → Deploy → Runtime → Audit
ENGINEERING
Reproducible builds, signed artifacts, policy-gated promotion, rollback hooks.
SECURITY
SAST/SCA, secrets scanning, supply-chain attestation, runtime controls.
OUTCOME
Pattern outcome: trusted promotion with clear rollback (not a customer metric).
Illustrative Architecture — not a customer case study.
Pattern 04Engineering Pattern
Cloud Platform Foundation
Foundation through platform services to golden paths and workloads with observability.
Cloud Foundation→Platform Services→Golden Paths→Developer Experience→Workloads→Observability
Cloud Foundation → Platform Services → Golden Paths → Developer Experience → Workloads → Observability
ENGINEERING
Landing zones, Kubernetes baselines, golden path templates, self-serve delivery.
SECURITY
Network and identity boundaries, policy-as-code guardrails.
OUTCOME
Pattern outcome: platform that grows without re-platforming (not a customer metric).
Illustrative Architecture — not a customer case study.
Pattern 05Engineering Pattern
AI Evaluation Pipeline
Dataset through harness to promotion gates and production monitoring.
Dataset→Evaluation→Regression Detection→Promotion Gate→Production Monitoring
Dataset → Evaluation → Regression Detection → Promotion Gate → Production Monitoring
ENGINEERING
Task-grounded harnesses, regression suites, promotion policies.
SECURITY
Data handling boundaries for eval datasets, audit for model decisions.
OUTCOME
Pattern outcome: regression caught by harness, not users (not a customer metric).
Illustrative Architecture — not a customer case study.
Pattern 06Engineering Pattern
LLM Cost & Quality Control
Request through model selection and execution to quality and cost governance.
Request→Model Selection→Execution→Quality Evaluation→Cost Measurement→Optimization
Request → Model Selection → Execution → Quality Evaluation → Cost Measurement → Optimization
ENGINEERING
Token accounting, retrieval efficiency, prompt and cache tuning.
SECURITY
Cost and data boundaries per request, audit for model interactions.
OUTCOME
Pattern outcome: spend explained and tunable (not a customer metric).
Illustrative Architecture — not a customer case study.
Pattern 07Engineering Pattern
Secure AI Runtime
Identity and data through AI application with policy and runtime controls to audit.
Identity→Data→AI Application→Policy→Runtime Controls→Monitoring→Audit
Identity → Data → AI Application → Policy → Runtime Controls → Monitoring → Audit
ENGINEERING
Boundary maps, isolation, runtime guardrails, policy enforcement.
SECURITY
Identity-aware data access, runtime isolation, policy gates.
OUTCOME
Pattern outcome: narrower exposure, observable control (not a customer metric).
Illustrative Architecture — not a customer case study.
Pattern 08Engineering Pattern
Production Observability Model
Logs, metrics, traces, AI quality, and cost converging into operational visibility.
Logs→Metrics→Traces→AI Quality→Cost
Logs + Metrics + Traces + AI Quality + Cost → Operational Visibility
ENGINEERING
Unified telemetry, dashboards, and SLO-aligned signals.
SECURITY
Secure handling of telemetry, audit for observability data.
OUTCOME
Pattern outcome: visibility that precedes incidents (not a customer metric).
Illustrative Architecture — not a customer case study.
Engineering principles behind the patterns
Secure by design — controls where data is accessed
Observable by default — traces with every system
Infrastructure as code — reviewed plans, not click-ops
Evaluation before scale — harnesses gate promotion
Build for production. Start with the architecture.
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