Column: Silicon systems design
Figure 1: Controlled engineering context for a verification agent
a formal environment and remove the behaviour in which the bug exists. Te challenge is not tool execution,
but preserving the connection between engineering intent, verification activity and defensible evidence.
The context an agent must understand A useful verification agent needs more than RTL and a general-purpose language model. It may require specifications, verification objectives, testbench structure, assertions, assumptions, coverage models, reference models, waivers and sign-off criteria. Tis context must be current and
trustworthy. If the specification is ambiguous or the verification plan is outdated, an agent can act consistently on the wrong information.
Context must therefore become
a controlled engineering asset, with ownership, versioning and traceability. Agentic AI may navigate verification environments, but it still depends on established methodologies such as UVM and Portable Stimulus.
From tool automation to workflow orchestration Te largest opportunity may lie not within a single task, but between tasks. Requirements become plans, plans
become tests, properties and coverage models. Regression results move into debug, which then creates design changes, new tests and revised assumptions. Each hand-off introduces delay and the risk of losing context. An agentic workflow could maintain these relationships. An agent investigating
a failure could retrieve the requirement, identify the relevant test and assertion, compare revisions, propose the next experiment and update the investigation record. Success should be measured not by
completed actions, but by earlier defect discovery, improved traceability and stronger closure decisions.
Human oversight must be designed into the flow A controlled verification agent needs a defined objective, clear authority boundaries and traceable outputs. Engineers should be able to identify the specification, design revision, model configuration, tool version and input data associated with each action. The agent must distinguish
between a confirmed tool result, an
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