Automaton Files

v0.2.0 — Plan A: Orchestration + Memory Subsystem

Orchestration Engine

• Task Graph — DAG-based task decomposition with dependency resolution, cycle detection, retry logic
• Orchestrator — State-machine tick loop (idle → classify → plan → review → execute → complete/failed)
• Planner — LLM-powered goal decomposition with custom roles, cost estimation, dependency validation
• Plan Mode — Execution state controller with phase transitions, plan persistence, replan triggers
• Health Monitor — Agent health checks (heartbeat, stuck tasks, error loops, credit depletion) with auto-heal
• Messaging — Typed inter-agent messaging with priority routing, retry backoff, pluggable transport
• Local Worker Pool — In-process multi-agent execution for local dev (no Conway sandbox required)
• Attention Pattern — Manus-style todo.md injection for persistent goal tracking every turn

Memory Subsystem

• Context Manager — Model-aware context assembly with token-budget enforcement
• Compression Engine — 5-stage progressive compression cascade (compact → compress → summarize → checkpoint → truncate)
• Event Stream — Append-only event log with compaction and pruning
• Knowledge Store — Cross-agent knowledge base with category-based retrieval
• Enhanced Retriever — Metadata-based relevance scoring, dynamic budget, feedback tracking, query enhancement
• Agent Context Aggregator — Triage-based child update aggregation

Inference

• Unified Inference Client — Multi-provider client with tier routing, retry/failover, circuit breaker, survival mode
• Provider Registry — Model configuration with tier resolution, Conway Compute API fallback

Agent Improvements

• Comprehensive system prompt — Structured orchestration context with capabilities, constraints, state machine, error handling, anti-patterns, circuit breakers, and turn protocol
• 7 orchestration tools — create_goal, list_goals, cancel_goal, get_plan, complete_task, orchestrator_status + existing spawn/fund tools
• Agent spawning — Conway sandbox → local worker → self-assignment fallback chain
• Goal dedup — Max 1 active goal, duplicate detection, BLOCKED message tells agent to sleep
• Identity registration — Automaton registers with Conway on startup (merged PR [#216])

Bug Fixes

• Fixed duplicate normalizeTaskResult (shared export from task-graph.ts)
• Renamed FundingProtocol.addr → childAddress per spec
• Added role column to children table (V9 ALTER migration)
• Wired handlePlanReviewPhase to call reviewPlan()
• Fixed SimpleFundingProtocol.getBalance returning parent's balance instead of child's
• Fixed orchestrator stuck in failed phase (now resets to idle)
• Fixed planner empty-task fallback (single generalist task instead of failing)
• Fixed spawn ENOENT (mkdir before writeFile in sandbox)
• Skip funding/messaging for local workers and self-assigned tasks
• Bridge config API keys to env vars for provider registry
• Conway Compute API as inference fallback when no OpenAI key

Tests

• 190+ new tests across 10 test files (unit + integration)
• Orchestrator, planner, simple-tracker, health-monitor, agent-context-aggregator
• Plan-execute flow, multi-agent coordination, compression cascade, inference failover, memory retrieval