// outline - full essay drafting; takeaways and bridge below
Most agentic workflows start from unstable inputs: tickets, chat transcripts, vague prompts, stale docs, and “you know what I mean” context.
This piece introduces the execution pack as the contract for a run: spec, plan, acceptance criteria, context envelope, readiness verdict, stop conditions, budget, privacy tier, sandbox profile, review mode, evidence requirements, and morning report.
CTO: If the work cannot be packaged, it should not run unattended.
CIO: Evidence is cheapest when designed into the workflow, not recovered after an incident.
AI leader: The quality of the agent run is set before the agent wakes up.
Once work is packaged, the organization needs a controlled runtime around the model. That is the harness.