Intent Capsules

A capsule is a seed. It carries everything an autonomous agent needs — intent, identity, methodology, and memory structure — and grows on any compatible machine.

What is a capsule

A capsule is a directory that defines an autonomous agent. You declare what you want the agent to do in a manifest. The intent computer gives it knowledge, an engine, and a machine to run on. One command deploys it:

$ ib germinate bookkeeper

Four phases, modeled on seed germination:

Anatomy

bookkeeper/ capsule.yaml # the manifest — what this agent does identity.md # who this agent is skills/ ingest.md # on: email categorize.md # on: after: ingest report.md # on: schedule: 0 6 * * 1 anomalies.md # on: schedule: 0 7 * * * vault/ # seed structure for persistent memory clients/ workflows/ reports/

A capsule = intent + identity + methodology + context. The methodology IS the product.

The manifest

The thinnest layer in the stack. Just a declaration of what you want to happen:

seed: bookkeeper version: 0.1.0 intent: "Process invoices, categorize transactions, and generate financial reports" identity: ./identity.md skills: - path: ./skills/ingest.md on: email - path: ./skills/categorize.md on: "after: ingest" - path: ./skills/report.md on: "schedule: 0 6 * * 1" - path: ./skills/anomalies.md on: "schedule: 0 7 * * *" vault: ./vault requires: substrate: [linux, darwin] scheduler: [systemd, launchd, cron] features: [email] schedule: heartbeat: 15m outcome: metric: invoices processed per week evidence: "reports/weekly/*.md"

Triggers

Skills activate on conditions, not just schedules:

email New file arrives in inbox from email delivery
schedule Cron expression matches — 0 6 * * 1 is Monday 6am
after Another skill just completed — skill chaining
watch A file matching a pattern was created or modified
manual Only when you explicitly invoke it

Reference capsules

bookkeeper

Process invoices, categorize transactions, generate financial reports

4 skills — email → ingest → categorize, weekly reports, daily anomaly detection

seo-auditor

Crawl client sites, analyze SEO health, deliver actionable audit reports

4 skills — weekly crawl → analyze → report, daily issue monitoring

social-media

Curate content ideas, draft platform-specific posts, optimize engagement

4 skills — daily curate → draft, weekly calendar, Friday engagement review

lead-gen

Identify, qualify, and nurture leads through research-driven outreach

5 skills — prospect → qualify → enrich → outreach, weekly pipeline report

The substrate adapts, not the capsule

The same capsule runs on an exe.dev VM, your MacBook, a Linux server, or a Docker container. The runtime detects the substrate and adapts: systemd on Linux, launchd on macOS, cron as fallback. Gateway API on exe.dev, Claude CLI locally. The capsule author writes methodology once.

Build your own

$ ib new my-capsule

This scaffolds a capsule directory with an empty manifest, identity template, and vault. Fill in the intent. Write the identity. Add skills as markdown files. Deploy.

A skill can be as simple as "when email arrives, extract the invoice data" or as involved as a multi-step research workflow with web scraping, analysis, and reporting. The instructions are natural language. The LLM is the runtime.

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