Lian and the agent loop
Understand the default identity, heartbeat turn, context assembly, delegation, and durable session lifecycle.
Reasoning proposes work; policy controls authority
Identity and context
Lian is the default agent identity. Soul files shape its operating character; session state, semantic memory, and approved Elixirs provide task-relevant context.
Heartbeat
The agentic loop evaluates work on a 555,555 millisecond heartbeat. Each turn assembles context, chooses a bounded action, records progress, and can delegate work to specialist sub-agents.
Governed action
Planning is not authority. Before a skill executes, policy resolves its declared capabilities and sends sensitive operations to the human approval queue.
Sessions and delegation
Session keys isolate conversations by agent, channel, and group. Sub-agent work receives its own scoped session while the parent retains the task relationship and durable transcript.
Recovery and continuity
Database-backed transcripts survive process restarts. Soul file changes are watched and hashed with BLAKE3, while cursor pagination lets clients resume long conversations without reparsing files.