Section 01 · Model · Harness · Orchestrator
Three concentric layers.
Alan Walsh · the AI Automators · the layer almost everyone skips is the outermost one
A capable model in a thin harness is a demo. Production is the outer two rings.
Section 02 · the Ralph loop
Spawn. Run. Sensor. Repeat.
an outer-harness pattern · respawn fresh sessions until the sensor passes
A spawn-respawn loop bounded by sensors. Each iteration is isolated; no shared scratchpad to corrupt.
Section 03 · planner · executor · DSL
The plan is an artifact. Not prose.
Andreas Stuhlmüller · Elicit · LLM writes the plan; interpreter runs it
The model writes a plan you can type-check, cost-estimate, policy-stamp - before any tool runs.
Section 04 · plan · execute · observe · backtrack
Backtrack is the power.
Kay Zhu · Genspark · workflows accumulate errors; agents recover from them
Workflows accumulate errors. Agents recover - by re-observing reality, not the script.
Section 05 · the difference
async/await vs durable execution.
same recipe · very different crash behavior
Almost the same code. Wildly different production behavior.
Section 06 · activities
Every external call is an activity.
workflow = pure orchestration · activities = the side-effects
The workflow body never touches the outside world directly. That's what makes it replayable.
Section 07 · human-in-the-loop
wait_for_signal - a 24-hour pause.
workflow sleeps free · resumes when human signals
No polling. No cron. The workflow costs zero while it waits.
Section 08 · idempotency
Same key, same outcome.
deterministic key per side-effect
Without idempotency, retries are dangerous. With it, retries are free.
Section 09 · tools 2026
Where the OSS picks land.
Postgres-native ↑↓ dedicated infra · OSS ←→ SaaS-only
DBOS for new teams already on Postgres. Temporal OSS when you outgrow it. Skip AWS Step Functions for AI workloads.
Section 09b · agent-task-protocol
A portable contract for what a task is.
one shape every framework can speak
Section 10 · vollko OSS
The primitives.
agent-task-protocol ☆
framework-agnostic durable agent tasks
shack-gateway
progressive-discovery MCP gateway (rs/ts/py)
shack-wasm-interpreter
sandboxed fuel-bounded WASM as MCP
rate-limit-guard
cross-process throttling (ts/py/rs)
circuit-breaker
classic CB pattern for activity retries
hmac-sign
webhook signing for activity callbacks
· · ·
Build the AI-native firm