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Platforms for Humans and Machines: Engineering for the Age of Agents — Juan Herreros Elorza
Original: Platforms for Humans and Machines: Engineering for the Age of Agents — Juan Herreros Elorza
Takeaway
To make coding agents productive in enterprise, redesign internal platforms around self-service APIs with shift-left feedback so agents (and humans) can iterate without humans-in-the-loop.
Summary
- Banking Circle (1T euro/year payments, 700 financial institutions) built Atlas platform: compute (K8s), infra, messaging, observability sub-platforms.
- Argues coding agents amplify platform pain — an agent can't walk upstairs to ask the infra team, so tribal-knowledge workflows become hard blockers.
- Five principles: self-service, API-based (with discoverability + schema + auth), shift-left local validation, precise feedback for agent loops, and proper docs.
- Recommends MCP servers on top of platform APIs so agents can iterate locally without pushing failing commits.
- Best practices weren't new — agents just make existing platform-engineering anti-patterns much more visible.
platform-engineeringinternal-developer-platformagents
Original description
As AI coding agents become first-class users of internal developer platforms, the practices that make platforms accessible to humans turn out to be the same ones that enable AI to thrive. Self-service interfaces, well-defined APIs with schemas and documentation, local-first workflows, and rich observability have always been important elements of a good platform. Now they are prerequisites for agents that can autonomously build, debug, and ship software. This talk explores what it means to design platforms where both humans and AI can collaborate effectively. We'll cover: - How to expose your platform as a product with structured APIs (and perhaps MCPs) - Why prioritizing local tooling pays dividends when agents need to iterate on errors - How observability becomes the bridge between runtime behavior and AI understanding We'll also discuss the flip side: AI is making it easier than ever to *contribute* to platform code, but that comes with new responsibilities around quality gates, context files like CLAUDE.md, and maintainability. Walk away with concrete practices to ensure your platform is ready for a future where agents are not just tools, but users of it. Juan Herreros Elorza - Team Lead, Banking Circle I'm Juan, a Platform Engineering enthusiast. I am working for Banking Circle, as the Team Lead in our Cloud Native Technology team. When I'm not working, I'm most likely rehearsing or performing improv comedy. Socials: https://juanherreros.com/ https://linkedin.com/in/juan-herreros-elorza https://github.com/jherreros Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/jherreros/platforms-for-humans-and-machines-engineering-for-the-age-of-agents