For over a decade digital prediction tools have changed policing. Their use has sparked critique about the way in which such tools challenge the presumption of innocence, the right to due process and non-discrimination, the proportional use of data and the secrecy that surrounds the actual variables used in the algorithms. More recently, criticisms have been reformulated as a question of agency: the tool itself has the power to change society. This paper discusses this agency: Who acts in the production and implementation of predictive software? Which parts of the software are comprehensible, which ones are harder to grasp? When and where is data generated that is fed into the algorithm and who is part in programming the software? A methodology of life cycles is used to capture these dynamics. By tracing the lifecycle of data and of a prediction algorithm, this paper describes how much tools, data and humans shape each other and how, together, they give rise to the logic of the pattern as a new agent within the prediction landscape.