AI-Assisted Software Engineering with Explicit Boundaries and Contracts
*By Soheil Mozaffari*
AI assistance can accelerate software tasks, but parallel work still depends on a shared understanding of responsibility. When that understanding is implicit, code, tests, or documentation may appear locally reasonable while conflicting with work performed elsewhere. This problem is not unique to AI-assisted development, but AI can make it more visible by generating artifacts rapidly from incomplete context.
**Boundary-Oriented Unified Development (BOUND)** addresses unclear responsibility boundaries in parallel software work. Its sequence—**Domain, Boundary, Contract, Execution, Verification**—places explicit consideration of the problem space and responsibility separation before implementation proceeds. BOUND supports human teams and AI-assisted teams; it is not an AI-only methodology. The BOUND DOI is [10.5281/zenodo.22257583](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22257583).[1]
The coordination problem in parallel work
Parallel development is often described as task division. More precisely, it requires independently performed work to be joined without ambiguous ownership or incompatible assumptions. A service team may interpret a data field differently from a client team. A contributor may change behavior that another contributor treats as stable. An AI assistant may satisfy a narrow prompt while introducing an unagreed assumption about inputs, outputs, errors, or lifecycle.
These situations are not necessarily failures of coding ability. They reflect boundaries and agreements that have not been made sufficiently explicit. A development approach can therefore help a team state the relevant domain, the division of responsibility, what each side promises, how work will be carried out, and how the result will be checked. BOUND structures these concerns rather than leaving them as background context.
BOUND: Domain, Boundary, Contract, Execution, Verification
The first element, **Domain**, establishes the area of concern for the work: the subject matter, capability, or problem space under discussion. It helps prevent a contribution from being treated only as an isolated implementation detail when its meaning depends on a wider context.
**Boundary** identifies the separation between responsibilities. It is not merely a technical endpoint or file division, but the point at which ownership, decision-making, or expected behavior must be distinguished. Making a boundary explicit helps contributors determine which decisions they may make independently and which require agreement with another party.
A **Contract** records that agreement in a form usable on either side of the boundary. Depending on the work, it may describe inputs and outputs, permitted behavior, error conditions, obligations, or acceptance conditions. Execution is then guided by an explicit shared statement rather than an inferred one. An AI system can work from a defined contract, while the team remains responsible for deciding whether it expresses the intended behavior.
**Execution** is the performance of the agreed work. It can include human implementation, AI-assisted implementation, review, testing activity, or other project actions. BOUND does not prescribe that execution be automated or performed by a particular type of contributor. Instead, it locates execution after the decisions that define the domain, boundary, and contract. Rapid generation remains connected to an agreed responsibility and contract rather than becoming a substitute for them.
Finally, **Verification** evaluates whether the executed result satisfies the contract at the defined boundary and remains appropriate to the domain. It is the stage at which the earlier explicit statements provide criteria for checking the result. If verification exposes a mismatch, the issue can be examined in relation to execution, the contract, the boundary, or the initial understanding of the domain.
Working with AI without delegating accountability
AI-assisted software engineering changes the speed and shape of execution, not the need for accountable decisions. An AI assistant may help draft code, propose tests, transform specifications, or explain an existing component. It does not remove the team’s need to define the relevant domain, decide the boundary, and agree on the contract. Treating generated output as evidence of a settled design can invert that order: implementation becomes the source of the specification instead of an outcome constrained by it.
A BOUND-oriented workflow offers a discipline for avoiding that inversion. Before assigning work to a person or prompting an AI system, the team can identify the domain and boundary involved. It can then provide or refine a contract that states what the contribution must uphold. The execution request can refer to that contract directly, and verification can examine the result against it. This does not guarantee correctness; it makes the basis for review explicit and enables disagreements to be discussed at an appropriate level.
The same approach applies when several human contributors collaborate. AI assistance is one possible participant in execution, not a replacement for the agreements that make collaboration intelligible.
Relation to IFEM
BOUND is related to the **Interface-First Execution Methodology (IFEM)**, whose sequence is **Interface → Contract → Execution → Verification**.[2] Both approaches place Contract before Execution and include Verification after Execution. BOUND adds **Domain → Boundary** before Contract. This addition foregrounds two questions that can otherwise remain implicit: what problem space is being addressed, and where responsibility is divided before a contract is written.
This relationship is a distinction in ordering and scope, not a claim that one method universally outperforms the other. IFEM centers an interface-first progression. BOUND begins by establishing domain and boundary so that a contract can be situated in a stated allocation of responsibility. Teams can use that distinction to consider whether an interface and its contract are sufficiently grounded when work is distributed or AI-assisted.
Conclusion
AI assistance does not eliminate the need for disciplined coordination. BOUND provides a sequence—Domain, Boundary, Contract, Execution, Verification—for making responsibility and agreement visible before parallel work proceeds. It preserves human accountability for domain, boundary, and contract decisions while allowing execution to be human or AI-assisted, providing an explicit basis for collaboration and verification.
References
[1] S. Mozaffari, *BOUND: Boundary-Oriented Unified Development*, DOI: [10.5281/zenodo.22257583](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22257583).
[2] S. Mozaffari, *IFEM: Interface-First Execution Methodology*, DOI: [10.5281/zenodo.20621561](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20621561).