Platforms for Humans and Machines: Engineering for the Age of Agents — Juan Herreros Elorza
Apr 8, 2026 · 21:15
Juan Herreros Elorza, team lead at Banking Circle, argues that the same platform engineering best practices—self-service, API-first design, local-first workflows, and rich observability—that serve human developers are now prerequisites for AI coding agents to autonomously build, debug, and ship software. Drawing from his experience building the internal platform Atlas, which handles over €1 trillion in cross-border payments annually, he explains how exposing platform capabilities via well-defined APIs (and optionally MCP servers) lets agents iterate locally, fail fast, and close the loop using API-accessible logs and metrics. He stresses structured documentation, including agent.md files and skills, to guide agents on how to contribute to the platform, and recommends combining guardrails for security with context files for best practices. Finally, he advises measuring outcomes like DORA metrics, support requests, and developer satisfaction, and suggests using AI as leverage to finally implement these long-known best practices.
