Graph Engineering

A fan-out is not a graph. Launching N agents at one scope is scatter-gather; a graph exists only when some units depend on, inform, or exclude others, and then the ordering is the work. Build the graph: a verification contract fixed before any node runs, nodes cut at judging seams, edges that state why order matters, a schedule that defaults to serial and earns every concurrency, one independent verifier per node — and a rendering the user reads and approves before the first node is dispatched.

Three rules carry the rest.

• The contract precedes the artifact. Define correctness before implementation, or implementation defines correctness and every later check merely confirms it.
• Whoever built it does not judge it. Every node is judged by a fresh context that never saw the building.
• Concurrency is an exception with evidence. Serial is the default because conflicting edits, duplicated work, and divergent decisions cost more than the wall-clock they save.

Build a graph only when there are edges to schedule: one unit depends on or is informed by another's result, or two units share a write scope or a single-writer resource. When no unit writes and no unit depends on another, run the units as plain concurrent reads and return their results — no contract, no ledger, no verifier seat, no heartbeat. One unit of work in one context is not a graph, and no amount of structure rescues a goal that was never fixed.

Roles