Pipeline-as-Specification

The medium-term evolution of pipeline-as-verifier: pipelines validate code against specifications directly, not against rules.

From david-sanchez: "A specification defines what should be built; the pipeline verifies that the implementation matches the specification's acceptance criteria, not just that it compiles and passes generic tests."

Adjacent near-term trends: - Adaptive verification depth — pipeline scales scrutiny by change risk profile. - Agent attestation standards — SLSA/Sigstore-style crypto binding of commit → agent → model version → spec → authorising human. - Collaborative remediation loops — pipeline reports failure to agent; agent retries; human only on bounded-attempt exhaustion. - Continuous compliance verification — background process keeps repo within skill-profile boundaries at all times, not just at CI.

Why this matters

End state of the Sanchez framework: the spec becomes the law, pipelines enforce it, attestation makes the chain auditable. Converges with durable-observable-debuggable-agents (Bantilan): durability + observability + debuggability applied at the CI/CD layer instead of the runtime layer.