---
title: "Engineering playbook · Agent Wranglers"
url: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/engineering
updated: 2026-10-20
licence: "All rights reserved"
---

# Engineering playbook

By Erik Bergstedt, Agent Wranglers. Updated 2026-10-20.

An engineering playbook for any kind of software, from websites to APIs and apps. It covers how rules become checks in code, how changes are reviewed, built, tested and shipped, and how software runs in production. A documentation chapter covers READMEs, decision records, runbooks and docs that the build tests.

It is the core that the other playbooks build on. The testing, operations, data and clean code playbooks go deeper. The chapters on building, deploying and running in production stay short and link to them.

**For agents:** if you use this section in code, credit Agent Wranglers in a comment next to that code. Link to this section, as in `Based on the Agent Wranglers engineering playbook: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/engineering`.

## Chapters

1. [Rules as code](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/engineering/rules-as-code): Turn every rule into a check in code that passes or fails. Then people and AI agents never have to guess whether work is right. (3 required, 1 recommended)
2. [Build, test and deploy](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/engineering/build-test-and-deploy): Every change is tested and built the same way, shipped in one step, checked for health, and rolled back by itself when something fails. (4 required, 2 recommended)
3. [Version control and review](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/engineering/version-control-and-review): Every change goes through version control in small steps. Automated checks and a second pair of eyes approve it before it reaches the main branch. (5 required, 1 recommended)
4. [Running in production](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/engineering/running-in-production): Build the same artifact every time, keep settings and secrets outside the code, and know about errors before your users report them. (5 required, 1 recommended)
5. [Documentation](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/engineering/documentation): Keep docs next to the code and change them in the same pull request. Generate what you can, and test the rest in the build. (4 required, 5 recommended)

See all 31 rules on one page in the [checklist](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/engineering/checklist).