An independent initiative developing foundational disciplines, methods, and artifacts for the design of consequential autonomous systems.
Autonomous systems now make consequential decisions in institutional workflows. They move funds. They alter contracts. They shape professional judgment. Yet their behavior is rarely deliberately designed before they run.
Intent should never be discovered in production. This initiative develops the disciplines and methods that make pre-runtime behavioral design possible for organizations that need it.
Pre-Runtime Agent Behavior Design
The foundational discipline for designing how consequential agents should behave before runtime. Introduces the Agent Behavior Specification (ABS) as the authoritative record of intended behavior in workflow-specific contexts.
Explore this work →June 2026 — Version 1.0
The missing discipline between institutional intent and agent implementation. Establishes the foundational theory and practice for pre-runtime behavioral design in consequential workflows.
Read the paper →Anchored Agency is developed by Arash Nourkeyhani, a designer and researcher with fifteen years of experience in complex enterprise environments.
This work is independent. The theories, methods, and artifacts are developed outside any institutional affiliation and reflect individual research and practice.