Decision Drift
Decision drift is the gap between what a team decided and what its code, docs, and AI agents actually do — decisions made but never delivered to the work.
Decision drift is the gap that opens between what a team decided and what its code, documentation, and AI agents actually do. It happens when a decision is made in a place the work never looks — a Slack thread, a meeting, a ticket comment — and is never delivered to the engineers and agents who need it.
Why it's getting worse
Drift used to cost you one confused engineer who could ask a question. Now an AI coding agent can violate a missed decision confidently, at machine speed, across many repositories — before anyone notices.
Related terms
Catching it
The durable fix is a decision record that files itself, is approved by an owner, reaches every human and agent, and is enforced at the pull request. That's the loop Lockstep runs.
- What causes decision drift?
- Decisions get made in conversations — Slack, standups, ticket comments — and are never written down where the people or agents doing the work will see them. Over time, the work diverges from the decision.
- How do you detect decision drift?
- Compare changes against the set of approved decisions. The cheapest place to do this is at the pull request, before code merges — flag anything that conflicts with an approved decision.
Related