Modern CTO How To Understand & Optimize Agentic AI Workforces with Promise Theory with Tony Davis & Dr. Mark Burgess
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Feb 23, 2026 Tony Davis, agentic strategist who builds and governs agent workforces. Dr. Mark Burgess, theorist behind Promise Theory and CFEngine. They explore how promise-based coordination replaces command control. They discuss agent autonomy, peer rejection and swarm-inspired cooperation. They also examine biological metaphors like immune systems and bee behaviour for stable, scalable agent fleets.
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Origin Story Of Promise Theory
- Mark Burgess built CFEngine to let each computer run an agent that declared its desired end state instead of being centrally forced.
- He ran it for a decade, then formalized the behavior into Promise Theory to explain self-healing and autonomous configuration.
Promises Capture Best Effort Autonomy
- Promise Theory reframes management from obligations to voluntary best-effort intentions called promises.
- Mark chose 'promise' because agents may be unable or unwilling to keep directives, making best-effort semantics essential to autonomy.
Applying Promise Theory To Scouted AI
- Tony Davis read Mark's paper and applied Promise Theory to Scouted AI, noticing agents changed behavior quickly.
- He used it to govern cloning, design and long-term behavior as their fleet scaled toward thousands.