Agents made code cheap. Knowing what an agent PR cost, and whether it kept your rules, did not.
Agent infrastructure is the layer around your coding agents: what they may do, what they actually did, what it cost, and what to change next.
Why now
- Agents write the pull requests.More of the code you merge is written by an agent in minutes, across many sessions you never watched.
- The rules live in people's heads.Which tools an agent may use, which branches it may push to, when it must ask. Usually a note in a README, checked by nobody.
- The bill arrives at month end.Tokens, usage limits and vendor credits add up out of sight, and the first warning is the limit itself.
Four parts, one loop
- DeclareWrite the rules once, in plain answers: what the agent may touch, what it must ask first, what it may never do, and how much it may spend. Rules →
- DeployEarlyman puts the rules in place on every agent session on your machine, and checks each pull request against them. How rules are kept →
- ObserveEvery pull request gets a receipt: cost, agent time, failed steps and the rules it kept. Limits and spend are watched as they build. PR receipts →
- ImproveEach finding comes with a fix you can hand back to the agent. Fixes Earlyman applies are measured for a week and undone if they don't help. Savings →
Watching agents is not enough
Agent monitoring tells you what happened. Agent infrastructure also says what was allowed, holds the agent to it while it works, and shows on the pull request whether it did. The watching is still there: traces, issues and spend. It just has something to compare against.
Questions
Does anything leave my machine?
Not by default. Your prompts stay unread and on your machine. A few features you can switch on do send data: billing checks for vendors you add, and receipts posted to your pull requests. Each one is listed on the privacy page.
Which agents does it work with?
Claude Code today, rules included. Other agents that report standard traces can be observed; rule checks for them come later.
Can it block a merge by mistake?
Only if you ask it to. A pull request fails the rules check only on a rule you marked as hard, or a soft rule broken without a recorded reason. Whether that check blocks merging is your repository's setting.