Engineering decisions need an authority, not another copy
Repository-local Markdown made planning easier for agents. It is versioned, close to the code and available to the same tools that implement the work. It also fragmented the organizational view: cross-repository dependencies are hard to query, references drift, and approvals or refusals live in whichever file happened to receive them.
AEP Service makes those engineering entities centrally addressable. Humans, agents and integrations submit semantic Agentic Engineering Protocol commands and queries. The service supplies trusted request context, decides access, opens the transactional authority and records the complete result.
human / agent / integration
│
│ versioned AEP command or query
▼
AEP Service
├─ trust boundary
├─ authorization
├─ transaction boundary
└─ operational policy
│
▼
Entity Runtime providers + PostgreSQL
What it owns
AEP Service owns the deployable boundary:
- verified request context and workspace admission;
- one fresh PostgreSQL transaction for every command;
- bounded HTTP execution, typed overload and graceful shutdown;
- immutable definition-bundle verification at startup; and
- public deployment artifacts, OpenAPI and operational documentation.
AEP owns the semantic entity vocabulary, commands, queries, strict wire documents and official client. Entity Runtime owns deterministic entity execution and generic storage/query providers. The service composes their released contracts; it does not copy or hide them.
What it deliberately is not
It is not a sprint board, customer issue queue, comment stream, notification marketplace or generic workflow editor. It does not expose SQL or a raw Entity Runtime store. It does not make Markdown a second persistence mechanism.
Markdown remains useful as a deterministic human review surface. A repository may render it on demand or commit and check the projection for drift. Changes become semantic commands before they affect the authority.
Preview truth
The transactional, storage and wire boundaries are available for evaluation. Production identity is not. The current verifier accepts one exact development bearer token and is safe only on host loopback or behind an explicitly isolated preview boundary.
Start with the OCI quickstart, then read the architecture and security model before deciding what the preview proves.