Nextside glossary

The terms we use to explain how the agent pipeline builds, tests and publishes software safely.

• ADR

  Architecture Decision Record. A short document that captures context, decision and consequence of a technical choice. Standard in the industry since Michael Nygard (2011).

• Harness Engineering

  Approach that structures AI usage with guides, sensors and hooks versioned in the repository, instead of relying on ad-hoc prompts per developer.

• Half-loop

  AI supervision model where the senior engineer stays on-the-loop, not in-the-loop. Designs the harness, sets guardrails and reviews architectural decisions — without line-by-line diff review.

• Sprint Zero

  Technical validation step before the build. Stack, deploy, security and the first architecture decisions are defined in writing before any feature is built.