The Autonomous Development Framework
ADF is the method CodeHero PRO implements: humans decide, agents build, evidence proves.
What ADF is
ADF is a way of building software in which AI agents do the engineering — they plan, build, test and document — and people supply only what nobody else can: the truth of the business, the credentials, the approvals. It is not a coding assistant. It is a method for running a software factory that a company can trust, inspect and keep.
Three guarantees hold in every project run under ADF:
The agents never guess a rule of your business. They decide every technical matter themselves.
Nothing is called finished on the strength of a sentence. A test, a loaded page, a record, a screenshot.
What is blocked is marked blocked. What was decided for you is listed. What is open stays open, in writing.
The twelve principles
Each rule exists because one specific failure happened in a real delivery: a guessed business rule, a success claimed without proof, work lost when an agent's memory filled up, a protection switched off to make a test pass, two agents editing the same file. The framework is the accumulated set of guardrails from production use.
The agent is the only engineer
During a build, nobody steps in to help. The agent understands the task, plans it, builds it, tests it and documents it. When it needs a person, that is a defined question at a defined point, not a hand on the keyboard.
Evidence, not claims
“Done” means a test ran, a page loaded, a record exists, a screenshot was taken. A sentence saying it works is not done.
Never guess a business rule
Technical choices belong to the agent. Prices, permissions, approvals, workflows, deadlines and exceptions come only from the people who run the business.
AI before human
Before a question reaches you, a second agent on a different provider tries to answer it from the material already available. Only what is genuinely yours to decide arrives at your desk.
Safe defaults, and blocked is never done
When no answer can come in time, the agent chooses the option that cannot hurt anyone: deny access, keep history, notify, fail closed. It records the choice. A part that waits on missing credentials is marked blocked, never finished.
Memory on disk
Agents forget when their working memory fills up. So every plan, decision and progress note is written into the project as it happens. Anything not written down is treated as if it never happened.
Serial by default
One task at a time, in a fixed order. Two agents work at the same time only when you say yes and the plan proves they touch different files.
Core slice first
The first milestone is the thinnest working path through what the product is for, proven end to end, before any secondary feature. For a shop: one product page, a cart, a checkout.
Verify without building
A second agent on a different provider checks the work. It only checks; it never edits. Its findings go back to the original builder as one fix task, and a circuit breaker stops endless loops.
Never invent facts
No made-up settings, product names, capabilities, credentials or test results. When something is unknown, the agent checks it, reads the real documentation, or marks the part blocked.
Root cause, never symptom; never weaken protection
A fault is fixed where it starts, following a fixed procedure. Security, validation and access checks stay on; nothing is switched off to make a test pass. A regression jumps the queue.
Self-contained tasks on a normal server
Every task carries its objective, the files it owns, the agreed interfaces, the facts of its environment and a definition of done. The agent works as if on an ordinary server and never has to know how the infrastructure is arranged.
What this means for you
You describe what you need in a plain-language interview. You answer the few questions that are genuinely about your business, at defined points. You receive a handoff report with four parts: what works, with evidence; what waits on you; what was decided for you; what is open. Everything in between — the plan, the tickets, the tests, the verification — happens inside the factory and stays open to your inspection.
Go deeper
CodeHero PRO implements ADF, the Autonomous Development Framework.