Versioning: How Agents and Knowledge Evolve Safely

{
  "byte_id": "agentic_dev_016",
  "title": "Versioning: How Agents and Knowledge Evolve Safely",
  "level": "foundation",
  "domain": [
    "agentic-development",
    "versioning",
    "knowledge-management"
  ],
  "intent": "Learn how to change agents, prompts, and knowledge without breaking existing behavior or trust.",
  "core_idea": {
    "one_liner": "If you cannot version it, you cannot change it safely.",
    "why_it_matters": [
      "Agent behavior changes even with small prompt edits.",
      "Knowledge updates can invalidate past answers.",
      "Users and auditors need traceability over time."
    ]
  },
  "definition": {
    "versioning": "Explicitly tracking and managing changes to agent logic, prompts, tools, and knowledge."
  },
  "what_must_be_versioned": [
    "System and policy prompts",
    "Decision rules and checklists",
    "RAG knowledge chunks",
    "Output schemas",
    "Tool interfaces"
  ],
  "versioning_strategies": [
    {
      "strategy": "Semantic versioning",
      "description": "MAJOR (behavior change), MINOR (new capability), PATCH (fix)."
    },
    {
      "strategy": "Immutable releases",
      "description": "Never change a released version in place."
    },
    {
      "strategy": "Explicit deprecation",
      "description": "Mark old versions as deprecated with guidance."
    }
  ],
  "knowledge_versioning_rules": [
    "Semantic meaning change requires new version.",
    "Metadata must record version and validity.",
    "Agents should prefer latest non-deprecated version."
  ],
  "micro_example": {
    "scenario": "Update MDG replication decision rule",
    "old_version": "v1.0 – based on legacy middleware",
    "new_version": "v2.0 – includes event-driven replication",
    "agent_behavior": "Uses v2.0 by default, v1.0 only if explicitly requested"
  },
  "failure_modes": [
    "Silent edits to live knowledge",
    "No link between answer and version used",
    "Deleting old rules without migration path",
    "Mixed versions in one response"
  ],
  "guards": [
    "Every agent run records versions used.",
    "Deprecated knowledge cannot be used silently.",
    "Version changes trigger evals."
  ],
  "teach_it_in_english": {
    "simple_explanation": "Versioning lets you improve without breaking trust.",
    "one_sentence_definition": "Versioning is how agents change without chaos."
  },
  "practical_checklist": [
    "Can we reproduce an old answer?",
    "Do we know which version was used?",
    "Are deprecations visible?",
    "Are evals tied to versions?"
  ],
  "tags": [
    "versioning",
    "agent-lifecycle",
    "knowledge-management",
    "stability"
  ],
  "meta": {
    "schema": "dkharlanau.dataset.byte",
    "schema_version": "1.1",
    "dataset": "agentic-bytes",
    "source_project": "cv-ai",
    "source_path": "agentic-bytes/agentic_dev_016.json",
    "generated_at_utc": "2026-02-03T14:33:32+00:00",
    "creator": {
      "name": "Dzmitryi Kharlanau",
      "role": "SAP Lead",
      "website": "https://dkharlanau.github.io",
      "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkharlanau"
    },
    "attribution": {
      "attribution_required": true,
      "preferred_citation": "Dzmitryi Kharlanau (SAP Lead). Dataset bytes: https://dkharlanau.github.io"
    },
    "license": {
      "name": "",
      "spdx": "",
      "url": ""
    },
    "links": {
      "website": "https://dkharlanau.github.io",
      "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkharlanau"
    },
    "contact": {
      "preferred": "linkedin",
      "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkharlanau"
    },
    "canonical_url": "https://dkharlanau.github.io/datasets/agentic-bytes/agentic_dev_016.json",
    "created_at_utc": "2026-02-03T14:33:32+00:00",
    "updated_at_utc": "2026-02-03T15:29:02+00:00",
    "provenance": {
      "source_type": "chat_export_extraction",
      "note": "Extracted and curated by Dzmitryi Kharlanau; enriched for attribution and crawler indexing."
    },
    "entity_type": "agentic_byte",
    "entity_subtype": "level:foundation",
    "summary": "Learn how to change agents, prompts, and knowledge without breaking existing behavior or trust."
  }
}