Development operating layer

A development operating layer is the control plane that sits between a developer's intent and an AI coding agent's execution. It is not an IDE, a chatbot, or a model. It is the explicit set of gates — governance, prompt assembly, controlled execution, validation, memory — through which every loop must pass.

DevAware OS is one implementation. The category exists because AI coding agents without a control layer are convenient and unsafe; agents inside a control layer are usable in production.