Configure Agents to Meet Your Engineering Standard

You rejected an agent's work. The code was not wrong. The work followed generic practices instead of the organization's standards. The problem is the configuration. The agent has no access to the skills, behaviours, and conventions your engineering standard defines. This guide shows you how to configure agents against that standard. Their output then reflects what the organization expects from any contributor, human or AI. The other half of this job is to see what the standard expects of you. For that half, see See What's Expected at Your Level.

Prerequisites

Complete these guides before you continue:

• Getting Started: Pathway for Engineers. Install Pathway and initialize a data/pathway/ directory with starter content or your organization's standard data.
• Authoring Agent-Aligned Engineering Standards. If your organization does not yet define its standard, start there. This guide assumes a standard exists and npx fit-pathway discipline --list returns your disciplines.

Identify the role to configure

Every agent configuration in Pathway maps to a discipline and a track. Human role definitions use the same coordinates. Before you generate an agent, identify which discipline and track describe the work the agent will do.

List the available discipline and track combinations:

npx fit-pathway agent --list

The expected output follows. Your organization's values differ:

se-platform software-engineering platform, Software Engineering (Platform Engineering)
se-sre software-engineering sre, Software Engineering (Site Reliability Engineering)
de-platform data-engineering platform, Data Engineering (Platform Engineering)
...

Each row shows a short ID, the discipline ID, the track ID, and a human-readable description. Note the discipline and track values for the role you want to configure. You use them in the next step.

If the combination you need is missing, the standard data does not define an agent section for that discipline or track. See Authoring Agent-Aligned Engineering Standards to add one.

Preview the agent configuration

Before you write files, preview what Pathway will generate. Run the agent command without --output to see the full configuration on screen:

npx fit-pathway agent software-engineering --track=platform

The output has three sections. Each section matches a layer in the generated agent team:

1. Team Instructions (.claude/CLAUDE.md) carry the cross-cutting context every agent needs: platform conventions, environment variables, and architectural decisions.
2. Agent Profile (.claude/agents/*.md) carries the agent's identity, working style, required skills, and constraints.
3. Required Skills (.claude/skills/*/SKILL.md) list the skills the agent loads, with descriptions so the agent knows when each applies.

Review the output. Confirm it reflects your organization's expectations:

• Confirm the team instructions section captures the platform and conventions the agent needs to know.
• Confirm the identity describes the right specialization.
• Confirm the working style entries reflect the behaviours your standard emphasizes.
• Confirm the constraints match the boundaries you expect the agent to observe.
• Confirm the skill list suits the discipline and track.

If the content looks wrong, fix the standard data. Do not fix the generated output. Pathway derives the configuration from the same YAML files that define human roles. Update the source. The agent configuration updates with it.

Calibrate the agent's level

The --level flag picks which level's expectations the generated agent encodes. Without the flag, Pathway selects a default level from core-skill proficiency.

npx fit-pathway agent software-engineering --track=platform --level=J060

Set --level explicitly when you generate agents that should meet different expectations. For example, a J040 agent and a J060 agent on the same team need separate profiles. When you omit the flag, the output matches the default-resolved behaviour byte for byte.

Generate the agent team

Once the preview looks right, generate the files into your project:

npx fit-pathway agent software-engineering --track=platform --output=.

Pathway writes the following structure. The skill directories match your discipline's tier arrays. The example below uses the starter:

.claude/
  CLAUDE.md                                  # Team instructions
  settings.json                              # Tool permissions
  agents/
    software-engineer--platform.agent.md     # Agent profile
  skills/
    task-completion/SKILL.md                 # Skill files
    incident-response/SKILL.md
    incident-management/SKILL.md

Pathway derives the agent name from the discipline's roleTitle. It adds the track as a suffix when you set one (for example, software-engineer--platform). Generalist configurations without a track omit the suffix.

Confirm the generated skills

List the skill IDs the agent received to confirm they match the discipline:

npx fit-pathway agent software-engineering --track=platform --skills

The expected output follows. Your organization's skills differ. The starter ships this shape for software-engineering --track=platform:

task-completion
incident-response
incident-management

Each skill file under .claude/skills/ contains procedural guidance for one domain: what to prioritize, what outputs to produce, and which checklists to follow. Pathway sets the proficiency level automatically so agents work at a consistently capable level across all skills.

Verify

You configured your agents against your organization's standard when you can confirm the following:

• The generated files exist in your project. Run ls .claude/agents/*.md to see the agent profile. Run ls .claude/skills/*/SKILL.md to see the skill files.
• The team instructions reflect your platform. Open .claude/CLAUDE.md. Verify it contains the conventions, environment, and coordination table your standard defines.
• The agent profile matches the role. Open the agent profile under .claude/agents/. Verify the identity, working style, and constraints describe the discipline and track you selected.
• The skills match the discipline. The skill files under .claude/skills/ correspond to the skills your standard assigns to this discipline and track.
• Pathway derives the configuration. Nobody hand-writes it. Make any adjustment you need in the standard YAML data. Do not edit the generated files directly. See Give Agents Organizational Context for where each type of guidance belongs and how to update agents when the standard changes.

What's next