This post is the culmination of over a year of research into how to properly use AI agents to write high-quality software in security-critical systems. I will be writing this post primarily from my perspective as a software developer, protocol developer, and maintainer of security-critical software. Over the past year I dove deep into AI agents. I have explored their limits, what they can and cannot be relied upon to do. I’ve created our own AI review tools that perform just as well as multi-billion dollar AI-review systems. I’ve maintained my own custom fork of an AI coding agent called Crush