Dunne, Corp. · In development
AI agents that build software the way a regulated IT department would: to a signed specification, under review at every step, with a record an auditor can follow from any line of code back to the person who approved it.
The auditor's question
“Why does this line of code exist, who authorized it, and show me the evidence.”
| What the auditor asks for | Written by a person | Written by an AI agent today |
|---|---|---|
| Authorization | A ticket | Usually nothing |
| Review | A named reviewer | Usually nothing |
| Risk acceptance | A signature | Usually nothing |
| Rationale | Ask the author | Gone when the session ends |
97% of enterprise development teams now use AI coding assistants. Only 30% have full governance over how those assistants are adopted and overseen. For teams that answer to a regulator or an auditor, that gap is the reason AI stays out of the codebase.
Black Duck, The State of AI-Powered Software Development · survey by UserEvidence, March 2026 · 831 enterprise engineers, organizations of 500+
43% of organizations cannot reliably tell AI-generated code from code a person wrote. Of those that had a production incident in the past year, 34% could not say whether AI-generated code contributed to it.
GitLab, AI Accountability Report · survey by The Harris Poll, June 2026 · 1,528 developers and technology buyers in six countries
Only 45% of those surveyed say they can trace AI activity to the code changes it produces, and 89% of organizations have had an AI-related production incident.
Qodo, 2026 State of AI Code Quality · survey by Censuswide, September 2026 · 500 developers and 300 engineering leaders, US only, at organizations already using AI in software development
What Society does
Society gives each project a team of AI agents organized the way your own engineering department is, with your people holding sign-off. Here is what that team does for you.
Requirements
Society interviews your business experts. When an answer is thin or vague, it follows up rather than filing the blank. The result is a specification a person reviews and signs.
Specification
The signed specification is the contract every agent works to. Drift from it is detectable and reportable, and it never comes down to someone's opinion.
Review
Architecture, security, data, testing and documentation each get a say before work ships. One objection stops the change and brings in a person.
Change control
When the build finds something the specification didn't foresee, Society proposes an amendment with its reason and cost. A person approves it, and the earlier version stays on file.
Standards
Corporate policy and industry frameworks plug in. A project can tighten what your organization requires. It cannot loosen it.
Exposure
Agents need to research, and the open web contains text written to manipulate them. Society keeps that text from steering the agents that change your codebase.
Evidence
For any line of code: the requirement it serves, the decision that produced it, the AI model and settings involved, who approved it, and when. The proof doesn't ask you to take our word for it.
Candor
When a safeguard is unavailable, Society records that it was unavailable. It does not show a green check it didn't earn.
Audit
The record exports in standard assessment formats, so your compliance team and your auditor work from the same material.
What we publish, and what we don't
Several of the ideas inside Society are new, and they took a long time to get right. We'd rather show them in a room than on a web page. If you are evaluating Society seriously, we will walk you through all of it.
The name
The mensores were Rome's land surveyors. Using a simple instrument called the groma, they laid out straight, verifiable lines before a road, a camp or a city was built, and their measurements settled disputes for centuries afterward.
Society applies the same discipline to AI agents. Lay the lines down first, build inside them, and keep a record that holds up when someone challenges it.
Built under its own rules
Since May 2026, Society has been building itself under its own controls. Its requirements, decisions, reviews and refusals are on its own signed record, including the parts that are unfinished.
The founder spent forty years producing evidence for people whose job was to doubt it. Society is that habit, built into software.
Who it's for
Society is for organizations that want the speed of AI-assisted development and have to answer to a regulator, an auditor or a contracting officer for every change.
Design partners
Society is in private development. We are looking for a small number of design partners in regulated industries to run it against real codebases and real audit findings. Write to us and tell us what you have to prove.
tom.williams@dunnecorp.comSociety of Mensores is under active development by Dunne, Corp. It already works: DunneFlow, our open-source tool, and DunneNote were built with it. Dunne, Corp. is at the pre-seed funding stage, and we welcome questions from investors at tom.williams@dunnecorp.com.