jschoubben
c0b35652d0
papa-hq reads 01 research -> 03 decision -> 02 design. The order is a scar, not a choice: 02-DESIGN existed from its initial commit, and when adr/ was finally promoted on 2026-07-13 it took the next free number rather than its place in the sequence. By then design was too settled to renumber. hal-hq was three commits old, so it is not. adr/ becomes 02-DECISIONS and 02-DESIGN becomes 03-DESIGN, and following the folder numbers now walks the process in the order it happens: research produces a decision, the decision authorises a design. 00-GENESIS becomes 00-META, matching papa's rename from the same restructure. Every path reference rewritten across documents, frontmatter, playbooks and skills. All links resolve; all 58 frontmatter blocks parse and their path fields still point at files that exist.
3.7 KiB
status, date, deciders, reconstructed
| status | date | deciders | reconstructed |
|---|---|---|---|
| accepted | 2026-07-12 | jochen | true |
12. An agent is a persistent employee, not an instance of a pool
Reconstructed after the fact from the evidence cited below.
Context
Agents were originally a pool: a named kind of worker, scaled to some number of interchangeable instances. Work went to whichever instance was free.
That model has no place to put the things that turn out to matter. An agent that accumulates knowledge of a domain cannot keep it, because the next task lands on a different instance. An agent cannot own a workspace, because there are several of it. It cannot be held to a policy — warned for a violation, then dismissed — because there is no continuing subject to warn.
Scaling was also solving a problem the mesh does not have. Instances were being multiplied to get concurrency, when concurrency is a property of how much work one agent may hold at once.
Considered options
- Keep the pool, attach memory to the pool. Rejected: shared memory across interchangeable workers is a knowledge base, not an agent's experience, and the mesh already has one.
- Keep the pool, make instances sticky. Rejected as a pool pretending to be identities — identity by scheduling accident, lost on any restart.
- One agent is one persistent identity, with concurrency as a property of it. Chosen.
Decision
An agent is a singular, named, persistent identity: a home node, a workspace on that node, accumulating memory, and a lifecycle — hired, active, draining, retired. Not a pool member.
Concurrency is a property of the agent, not a count of copies: an agent has a cap on how many sessions it may hold at once.
Lifecycle is explicit and has verbs. An agent is hired onto a node; it may be reassigned while idle; it is retired by draining first, and forced only deliberately. Retired agents are not deleted.
Surge capacity is expressed within the model rather than against it: a template agent is a blueprint, cloned into a real agent with a lifetime when a queue grows, drained and retired when it expires. A temporary employee is still an employee.
Some agents are human. What differs is modality — how the agent acts — not category. A node itself is an agent of a kind exempt from the hiring lifecycle.
Consequences
- Memory, workspace and reputation have a subject to belong to. Policy becomes possible: an agent that violates a rule can be warned, and warned agents can be dismissed.
- The mesh gained a hiring model, and with it the question of who may hire.
- Scaling by adding instances is gone. If one agent is saturated, either its session cap rises or another agent is hired — both deliberate acts.
- The transition was not free. Lifecycle columns had to reach every query that selects an agent, and the ones that were missed failed at the moment of hiring rather than at startup.
- This is the decision ADR 0015 generalises: one kind of participant, differing only in modality.
References
docs(adr): agents as persistent employees + MINERVA librarian(#495), 2026-07-12 — the original record, in the code repository.feat(B4): one persistent employee, N sessions — rename max_instances → max_sessions(#547) andfeat(noxflow): B3 — workspace provisioner for agent employee model(#549), 2026-07-20.feat(noxflow): warn-then-fire agents who merge to main without review(#209), 2026-06-01 — policy that presumes a continuing subject, predating the model that provides one.- Knowledge base:
agents/employee-lifecycle,agents/temp-surge,agents/workspace-layout. - The migration cost:
troubleshooting/noxflow-agent-enriched-select-missing-lifecycle-columns(#546).