AI Operations · Glossary
AI Operations Discipline
AI Operations is a discipline, with primitives, an operating model, and a lifecycle, not a product category and not a buzzword.
The discipline framing is the load-bearing claim of the master category. Categories rise and fall. Disciplines compound. DevOps is a discipline. MLOps is a discipline. AI Operations is a discipline.
The primitives are the Eight Components of an Interactive Agent: Prompts, Policies, Routines, Glossary, Macros, Variables, Tools, Knowledge Base. Domain experts compose these into the behaviour the agent executes.
The operating model is centralised governance and distributed ownership (see Centralised Governance; Distributed Ownership). One estate, governed centrally. Many authors, owning their policies at the edge.
The lifecycle is Build-Connect-Deploy-Govern-Improve. Five stages, sequenced and named (see Build-Connect-Deploy-Govern-Improve Lifecycle). The discipline runs the cycle continuously, not once per release.
Naming the discipline matters because the alternative is naming features. Features depreciate. Disciplines accumulate canon.