The lifecycle did not get easier. The handoffs got more interesting.
This is what changed inside our build cycles after the platform team integrated AI agents into the development loop.
Discover
The discovery phase now produces both a problem statement and an evaluation harness. If you cannot evaluate it, you cannot ship it.
Design
Schema-first, audit-aware. The audit pack template is named on day one, not built reactively.
Build
Two-week cadence, eval gates per release, runbooks travelling with each merge.
Ship + Observe
Cost and latency under SLO. Evidence packs on demand. The audit lineage is the byproduct of the rhythm, not a thing produced under regulator pressure.