diff --git a/AGENTS.md b/AGENTS.md
index 105f6170..8dda6210 100644
--- a/AGENTS.md
+++ b/AGENTS.md
@@ -120,6 +120,27 @@ never force-push without the user's explicit approval.
 When a rule and backward compatibility conflict, **the rule wins.** List the callers that break and
 fix them; do not keep the forbidden thing "so nothing breaks".
 
+### What counts as the owner's decision
+
+Added after an agent turned the owner's question "should ExecuTorch be the NPU back end?" into an
+offline per-model `.pte` pipeline with its own CI, recorded it as "decided, do not re-discuss" and
+later as project intent. The owner had approved none of it (torchnative, 2026-08 to 2026-11).
+
+- **A question is not a decision.** "X를 쓰는게 좋을까?", "should we use X?" opens a decision. If the
+  owner did not answer, it stays open; never record it as settled.
+- **Approving a goal is not approving a means.** "Make the Snapdragon NPU work, go ahead" approves
+  the goal. The engine, the dependencies, the pipeline, the CI workflow and the artefact types an
+  agent picks to reach it are separate decisions.
+- **Never restate the owner's question as a different one.** When asking for a decision, quote the
+  owner's words and the constraint behind them (for example "NNAPI is deprecated, so what
+  abstraction reaches every vendor's NPU?"), and give options that answer that question.
+- **Ask before adding** a dependency, a pipeline, a CI workflow or a kind of artefact the owner did
+  not name. Show the options and wait.
+- **Docs keep provenance.** A line in INTENT, SPEC, AGENTS or a design doc that states a direction
+  cites the owner's words (date and source). Anything else is marked "agent proposal, not
+  confirmed". Never write "decided", "settled" or "do not re-discuss" for a choice the owner did not
+  make, and keep that mark when a doc is restructured.
+
 ## 8. Verification that can fail
 
 - Never read a build's exit code through a pipe (`| tail`, `| grep`). Redirect to a file, then read