Implementation: ENABLED (work runtime) · IMPLEMENTED (typed lifecycle, drive runner) · Exposure: INTERNAL. See status labels. The agent is two machines. The Work Machine decides how work persists and progresses; the Cognitive Machine decides how cognition is performed. This page covers the first: “How does work live?” The Work Machine carries a run across time, processes and restarts. A model never drives it; the work runtime does.

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Architecture contract

Why this is separate from cognition: a run has to survive a model being evicted, a process dying and a machine restarting. That only works if lifecycle, leases and waiting are durable records owned by the system, not steps inside a model loop.

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Current implementation

The work runtime is the Allternit Factory engine. On main today:
  • Node outputs, manual and timer wait gates, leases with heartbeat and reclaim, campaigns, a keyed wake queue and the attention gate.
  • A typed node lifecycle with a legal-transition table and a mapping from the stored node statuses. It is merged as a library and is not yet the enforced path for every transition.
  • Every spawned node gets a resolved execution environment: a working directory, an allowlist of environment keys, filesystem scope and a network policy. The resolved document is recorded in the ledger.
  • Work-bound executor paths are being converged on the Allternit policy gate; direct interactive runtime behavior may differ from Agency/work-runtime execution.
  • The drive runner, which walks a graph and spawns executors under spawn caps, is an opt-in operator command, not a daemon.

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Availability

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Developer relevance

If you write an executor, a tool or a verifier, you run inside a node. You receive a lease, heartbeat while you work, produce outputs and evidence, and stop. You never mark a node done and you never notify a person directly.