Overview¶
Iteron is the first coding vertical of a broader agent-runtime design. The
current product is a terminal application: the iteron executable composes a model
provider, repository tools, a durable run record, permissions, sandbox policy,
verification, and the TUI or one-shot frontend.
Who it is for¶
The current pre-alpha is intended for:
- contributors testing the runtime and terminal experience;
- developers evaluating provider, permission, record, or replay behavior;
- users willing to operate it in a disposable or recoverable repository;
- researchers working on bounded orchestration and governed strategy contracts.
It is not yet a supported replacement for a production coding-agent workflow.
Delivered and targeted¶
| Area | Present today | Still target work |
|---|---|---|
| Frontend | Interactive TUI; one-shot text, JSON, and JSONL | Stable frontend-independent App Server |
| Providers | Three wire adapters and six built-in provider profiles | Complete provider lifecycle and production conformance |
| Repository work | Read, search, edit, shell, Git, memory, skills, hooks, initial MCP tools | Atomic multi-file patch, persistent PTY, complete LSP/MCP lifecycle |
| Safety | Permission lattice, bounded budgets, scoped effects, macOS/Linux sandbox backends | Audited single effect path and comprehensive hostile-repository evidence |
| Durability | Hash-chained local run records, resume, continue, and fork | Pure reducer, full crash reconciliation, versioned external protocol |
| Evolution | Non-authoritative types and promotion-boundary contracts | Dataset registry, held-out evaluation, shadow, canary, promotion, rollback |
Five invariants¶
Iteron evaluates mechanisms against five project invariants:
- Bounded — loops, retries, queues, output, time, cost, and concurrency have explicit ceilings.
- Recoverable — interruption and crash need explicit recovery semantics.
- Reproducible — recorded nondeterminism replays; model output is not silently regenerated.
- Observable — phase, usage, effects, verification, and strategy attribution are emitted where implemented.
- Security-bounded — authority can only narrow from its operator-set ceiling, never self-widen, and its blast radius is explicit.
These are design requirements, not a claim that every current code path has completed production evidence.