Protean

Formerly Agent; see the rename notes.

Protean builds agents as typed, resumable programs. Its supported application is Protean: a native executable that investigates a read-only snapshot, selects among approved models and reasoning settings, loads approved skills, asks questions, and constructs and reuses bounded pure tools.

The application is authored in Zig. Horos checks and compiles its control flow into BPI3; native Kronos owns execution and continuation. Protean supplies provider I/O, tools, task storage, and CLI/stdio clients. The host does not interpret a recipe or run a second application policy loop.

Build and run

Use Zig 0.17.0, tar, and unzip. Approved source archives and SQLite are acquired and authenticated by a Zig bootstrap; Node and Python are not needed. From this checkout:

zig run tools/native/dependencies.zig -- setup \
  conformance/protean/dependencies.lock.json \
  conformance/protean/native-dependencies.lock.json \
  .protean-native/inputs "$(command -v zig)"
zig build protean -Doptimize=safe
./zig-out/bin/protean describe-build
./zig-out/bin/protean demo --offline --state-dir ./adaptive-demo

Setup authenticates complete source inventories, seeds Zig's pinned Horos package, and retains only native Kronos source and SQLite inputs. Append --offline to setup to require previously cached archives. Existing dependency directories are rechecked and never silently replaced.

The offline demo uses recorded replies through the actual authored program. For configured operation, see Protean and the native build and operations guide. Inference requires explicit configuration, authorization, and a credential file; there is no credential discovery or paid call in ordinary qualification.

Supported native targets are aarch64-macos and x86_64-linux-musl. SQLite, the small native C bridge, libc, and OS facilities remain dependencies. The installed agent needs no compiler, JS/WASM runtime, or adjacent source tree.

Reusable authoring and embedding

Protean remains a library. protean.system, Context, and compile construct ordinary Horos programs. Checked model responders retain request-time offers; adaptive controls, inboxes, prompts, skills, compiled tools, and the generic interaction/approval constructions remain available to downstream authors. Model calls, choices, and continuations belong to the program.

The public addNativeSystem build function accepts caller-owned definition, types, and environment paths, or an already emitted image/assets/types tuple. It uses the same native source admission and asset/metadata writers as the repository application. The downstream recipe builds the adaptive application through that public API.

Architecture · Trust boundaries · Adaptive model contracts · Native Responses

Qualification

zig build check-protean check-native -Doptimize=safe
node test/protean/installations.mjs .protean-native/inputs zig-out/bin/protean

Node is an external verification controller only. The independent native peer uses controlled HTTPS, actual authored actions and created tools, killed/restarted tasks, frozen inputs, malformed archives, and cancellation. The downstream witness uses a clean source package and an OS executable boundary that excludes Node and Python during acquisition, authoring, public-API building, installation, inspection, and offline execution. Source and compiler caches are authenticated or reused without deleting unrelated local data.

CI qualifies Linux and retains only the adaptive executable, its build metadata, program/contracts, and example configuration. The complete workflow target is 300 seconds and its maximum is 360 seconds. Exact-head results belong to the PR; a previous run does not qualify a changed candidate.

Retired applications

The fixed repository agent, native minimal demo, inquiry/parser/document applications, JavaScript runners, and JavaScript mobility deployment have been removed. See migration notes. Distributed adaptive mobility is future work. Checkpoint export/import preserves local continuation and compatibility checks; it does not establish exclusive distributed custody.

Horos's independent source oracle and Kronos's source-agreement tests remain outside this product. Kronos's optional JS/WASM embedding remains supported by Kronos and is not a native Protean prerequisite.