Agent Forge

Outcome

Design the smallest justified persistent actor, or deliberately downgrade the request to a skill or temporary worker. Compile it only when a Foundry runtime is present.

Agent necessity gate

An agent must own at least one durable boundary:

• stable decision rights;
• a distinct memory scope;
• a constrained tool or permission boundary;
• genuine ownership transfer or handoff authority;
• an ongoing schedule, channel, or API trigger.

If none applies, stop and route to $skill-forge. A name, persona, or desire for “more intelligence” is not an agent boundary.

Procedure

1. Build the Task Envelope.
   • Record the objective, deliverables, stakes, autonomy, permissions, evidence policy, and termination tests.
2. Prove necessity.
   • Mark each necessity-gate field true or false.
   • Explain the persistent boundary in operational language.
   • Compare the proposed agent against a skill, deterministic tool, and temporary task worker.
3. Define decision rights.
   • State what the agent may decide, what it may recommend, and what requires operator approval.
   • Exclude public release, financial commitment, destructive action, permission expansion, and substrate change unless explicitly authorized.
4. Define memory and tools.
   • Name readable and writable scopes separately.
   • Choose turn, session, or durable retention.
   • Allow only the minimum tools needed; list denied tools explicitly.
5. Define handoffs and termination.
   • Give every handoff a condition and target.
   • Set success conditions, stop conditions, and a hard turn or round ceiling.
6. Compose existing skills.
   • Agents orchestrate capabilities; they do not duplicate skill procedures inside a persona prompt.

7. Select the execution mode.

   • Foundry runtime available: only when tools/foundry/cli.mjs and foundry/contracts/ exist in the current workspace, compile and prove:

   node tools/foundry/cli.mjs forge \
     --envelope <task-envelope.json> \
     --pack <agent-pack.json> \
     --out <package-directory>
   node tools/foundry/cli.mjs prove <package-directory>

   • Portable skills-only install: read references/portable-contracts.md, then author the Task Envelope and Agent Pack with those field names. Mark compilation and proof pending-runtime; do not invent an Evidence Receipt. Provide the commands above as an optional handoff for a later SIS workspace run.
8. Refuse false persistence.
   • If the boundary disappears during design, return a Skill Pack proposal instead of forcing agent creation.

Quality gates

• At least one durable boundary is true and explained.
• Decision rights do not exceed the Task Envelope autonomy.
• Tool and memory permissions are least-privilege.
• Handoffs do not form an unbounded loop.
• The agent has explicit success and stop conditions.
• Behavioral, security, and drift evidence are required before production autonomy.

Return

Return the necessity verdict, chosen topology, Agent Pack, execution mode, permissions requiring approval, and any downgrade recommendation. Include a compiled package path and Evidence Receipt only when they were actually produced.