# A lightweight governance layer that helps agents plan before coding

**URL:** <https://forum.cursor.com/t/a-lightweight-governance-layer-that-helps-agents-plan-before-coding/165249>\
**Category:** Built for Cursor\
**Tags:** rules, plan-mode\
**Created:** [July 9, 2026, 7:11am UTC](https://forum.cursor.com/t/a-lightweight-governance-layer-that-helps-agents-plan-before-coding/165249 "2026-07-09T07:11:23Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Mehmet\_Aydogan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8edcca/32.png) [@Mehmet\_Aydogan](https://forum.cursor.com/u/Mehmet_Aydogan)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2026, 7:11am UTC](https://forum.cursor.com/t/a-lightweight-governance-layer-that-helps-agents-plan-before-coding/165249/1 "2026-07-09T07:11:23Z")

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### Feature request for product/service

– Other –

### Describe the request

Hi everyone,

I’m not a professional developer — I’m a beginner who started using AI agents  
to build a real project from scratch. Along the way, I kept running into the  
same problems over and over: agents would jump straight into coding without  
understanding what I actually wanted, leave no plan behind, claim things were  
“done” without evidence, and create chaos that was hard to untangle in the  
next session.

So I started writing down rules — just markdown files at first — to force the  
agent to ask me questions before writing code, create a plan I could review,  
and track what was actually done vs. what was just edited. Over time, these  
notes grew into a small governance framework that I eventually extracted from  
my main project into its own standalone repo:

> **[GitHub - zyganali-glitch/Universal-Agent-OS: The Premier Governance & Collective Memory...](https://github.com/zyganali-glitch/Universal-Agent-OS)**
>
> The Premier Governance & Collective Memory Framework for Autonomous AI Agents

It already has native Cursor support (via .cursorrules) and works with 10+  
agents. What surprised me most was that even the cheapest, lowest-tier agent  
models became noticeably more productive and coherent when working inside this  
governance structure. The “interview first, plan before code” discipline seems  
to compensate for a lot of model weakness.

I want to be honest about the trade-offs — this approach intentionally adds  
friction. It’s bureaucratic by design. It uses more tokens because the agent  
reads governance files and writes plans before touching code. These are  
conscious choices: the idea is that a little overhead early prevents a lot of  
chaos later. But I understand this won’t appeal to everyone, especially people  
who want fast, zero-ceremony prototyping.

The core ideas that might be interesting for Cursor:

- **Phase-0 Interview:** Agent asks structured questions one-by-one before  
writing any code — locks down platform, scale, and architecture decisions
- **Plan-before-code lock:** No implementation until a reviewable plan exists
- **Honesty Boundary:** Agent must distinguish between “edited” and “validated”  
— no more confident-sounding “done” claims without proof
- **Session memory:** 4-pillar collective memory files that persist lessons,  
architecture, environment, and user preferences across sessions
- **Multi-Role Review:** Every change reviewed from multiple perspectives  
(beginner, expert, accessibility, security)

Everything is MIT-licensed. I’m not pitching a product — I’m sharing an idea  
that helped me as a complete beginner get real value from agents. If any of  
these concepts are useful for Cursor’s roadmap, I’d be happy to discuss.

Thanks for reading.