The Linux of the Agentic Age
A modular, secure, Rust-native runtime for building intelligent agents that can plan, act, reflect, and adapt.
Inspired by the idea of OS-level AI systems explored in the film Her, Agentic Runtime focuses on building the execution infrastructure that intelligent agents could run on.
Rather than building a single assistant, this project explores what it takes to build the runtime layer for intelligent software systems.
The future will likely involve software agents capable of interacting with tools, environments, and other systems autonomously.
Most current agent frameworks focus on:
- prompt orchestration
- application scaffolding
- task automation
What is still largely missing is execution infrastructure — the runtime responsible for:
- managing agent lifecycles
- executing tool interactions safely
- maintaining memory and context
- enabling structured reasoning loops
- making agent behavior observable and controllable
Agentic Runtime aims to provide that foundation.
The runtime separates responsibilities into distinct layers:
Agent
↓
Protocol
↓
Runtime
↓
Context
↓
Tools
↓
Memory
| Layer | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| Agent | goal-driven coordination |
| Protocol | reasoning processes (planning, reflection) |
| Runtime | execution engine and safety layer |
| Context | environment interface |
| Tools | capabilities available to agents |
| Memory | knowledge and learning |
More details can be found in docs/architecture.md.
Agents operate through a structured lifecycle:
Goal
↓
Planning
↓
Simulation
↓
Execution
↓
Feedback
↓
Memory Update
↓
Reflection
This loop enables agents to continuously improve their behavior over time.
More details: docs/execution-model.md.
src/
├── agent/
├── protocol/
├── runtime/
├── context/
├── tools/
└── memory/
Each module corresponds to a core architectural layer.
- Safe, pluggable tool execution
- Structured planning and execution lifecycle
- Integrated memory systems
- Language-agnostic access (CLI / REST / FFI)
- Observability and reflection mechanisms
All commits must pass:
cargo fmtcargo clippycargo check
These checks are enforced through a Git pre-commit hook.
Agentic Runtime is an early-stage experimental runtime exploring the foundations of agent execution systems.
The architecture may evolve as the project matures.
The guiding principle of the project is:
Never hardcode what AI can reason about.
See PHILOSOPHY.md for the full design philosophy.