The Rise of Contract-Based Agents: Comparing My "Contract-First" Approach to Karpathy's "LOOPS.md"

Introduction

The conversation around AI agents is shifting rapidly from "vibe-based prompting" to structured system architecture. If you've been following recent developments, you might have seen Andrej Karpathy's technical notes, LOOPS.md, which outline rules for letting models run autonomously.

One section in his notes particularly stood out to me: "III. NEGOTIATE THE CONTRACT FIRST."

Reading it felt incredibly familiar. Back in April, I published a detailed guide on Dev.to titled Contract-Based Design: How I Make AI Agents Work Faster Without Breaking Each Other.

It is fascinating to see two independent developers—operating at different scales—arrive at the exact same structural solution to the same problem. Here is a breakdown of why this pattern is emerging as an industry standard.