Holon

Create and run AI assistants on your own computer or server. Assign tasks, track progress, and let them follow up. Open source for individuals and teams.

Agents, roles, and guidance

An agent is an addressable worker with its own identity, guidance, memory, and work state. You can return to the same agent from another client without creating a new identity. A chat window is one way to interact with it; the runtime owns the agent.

For example, a reviewer agent can inspect a change today and answer a follow-up tomorrow using its saved work records. Its identity alone does not keep that review running. Continuing work also needs a runnable objective or a recorded wait that can resume when the expected event arrives.

Identity and responsibility

The agent ID identifies the recipient of messages and the owner of runtime state. A role describes the work that agent should do. Calling an agent reviewer does not automatically give it review instructions, repository access, or permission to approve a pull request.

Use a persistent agent when a responsibility benefits from accumulated context, such as maintaining documentation. Use a supervised child for a bounded delegation, such as checking links in one directory. The parent remains responsible for accepting the child's result and handling cleanup. See Multi-agent collaboration.

What belongs in Agent Home

Agent Home holds the agent's own durable files. Its AGENTS.md describes the role, standing responsibilities, and escalation boundaries. Curated memory holds stable preferences and facts; notes hold longer reference material. Runtime-managed records preserve work and execution evidence.

Project code and project conventions belong in the project workspace. A reviewer that works on two repositories can keep its review role in Agent Home while each repository supplies its own build commands and contribution rules. Keeping these scopes separate avoids carrying one project's conventions into another.

How guidance fits together

Loaded guidance tells the agent how to work within its authorized scope:

These sources have scopes and precedence. A project rule to run tests does not authorize a release when the operator requested a read-only review. An ordinary file opened during research does not acquire the authority of loaded guidance. See Trust boundaries.

An Agent Template initializes a new agent's role and optional skills. Once created, the agent has its own files and history. To change an existing agent's responsibilities, update its guidance deliberately rather than trying to reapply a template over its state.

Lifecycle and limits

An agent can be idle or waiting while its identity and work records remain available. Closing a client is different from stopping the agent or daemon. Deleting an agent is a separate lifecycle action, not a way to close a chat. Inspect outstanding work and ownership before cleanup.

When created without an explicit initial message (through the Web GUI, API, or holon agent create), the agent runs a default bootstrap initialization turn so its conversation view is ready immediately. One-shot command runs bypass this turn to accept the caller's prompt directly.

Persistent identity also does not mean unlimited recall. Each model call has bounded context, and an interrupted command may need recovery even when the objective survives. Context continuity explains these limits.

Next steps