The Intent Bottleneck: When AI Compresses Delivery, Strategy Becomes the Constraint

Abstract

This working paper argues that AI-native delivery compresses only the final stage of a six-stage chain running from an institution's covenant with those it serves to running software, so that by Amdahl's law the constraint moves upstream into how organisations form, prioritise, and preserve intent. It introduces intent provenance — the unbroken, traceable, durable, machine-checkable, and contestable chain from a stated obligation to the test that proves it in production — and the service covenant as the layer above vision and mission at the top of that chain. In closing it defines decision custody: an institution's demonstrated ability to reproduce, explain, defend, and answer for every consequential decision made in its name, human or machine, for as long as the consequences of that decision last. Decision custody is positioned as the institutional counterpart to decision sovereignty, a state-level concept defined elsewhere in the literature. The covenant is the promise; custody is the proof. Part of the Sovereign Digital Resilience series.