From c8bc9cdbe8cfb67a3bd2a7ff6fb604d80bbff1ca Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Ollie Agent Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:56:30 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] docs: connect Ollie evolution to AnviLLM research --- doc/evolution.md | 34 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 34 insertions(+) diff --git a/doc/evolution.md b/doc/evolution.md index 327cf62..3b9ebf1 100644 --- a/doc/evolution.md +++ b/doc/evolution.md @@ -1,5 +1,39 @@ # Architectural Evolution +## AnviLLM: Research That Led to Ollie + +Before Ollie, there was `~/src/anvillm`: the working laboratory in which the +filesystem-as-agent idea first became concrete. Beginning on February 9, 2026, +AnviLLM orchestrated Claude Code, Kiro, and Ollama sessions in `tmux`, exposing +session state, control, output, and inter-agent communication through a 9P +namespace. It answered the first question: **can independent agent CLIs be +made to cooperate through ordinary file operations?** Yes—with caveats. + +AnviLLM was deliberately exploratory. Its history records the path from a +monolithic client to the `anvilsrv` daemon and Assist client; from polling and +process inspection to hooks, events, and streaming reads; from ad-hoc prompts +to fire-and-forget workflows, roles, a supervisor, and a conductor; and from +simple messages to mailboxes, beads, and cross-backend coordination. It also +tried several frontends—Acme, Emacs, a web interface, and a curses TUI—and +proved that a 9P surface lets each of them remain replaceable. + +That experiment left durable lessons. A filesystem is a powerful integration +surface: `read`, `write`, pipes, and blocking streams compose without a +special-purpose orchestration protocol. But wrapping external CLIs makes the +runtime depend on backend-specific hooks and fragile process heuristics; even +“running” versus “idle” cannot be inferred uniformly. A 9P socket is not an +authentication system: Unix ownership and permissions must carry the boundary. +State, recovery, cancellation, and message delivery must be explicit rather +than inferred from terminal behavior. And orchestration belongs outside the +agent core, where scripts and clients can evolve independently. + +Ollie is the continuation of that research, not a repudiation of it. It keeps +AnviLLM's strongest result—the 9P namespace as the API—while moving the agent +loop, backends, tools, sandbox, persistence, and context management into a +runtime designed for direct control. AnviLLM taught us what the filesystem +surface could unlock; its dead ends taught us what the runtime must own. This +log begins there, with gratitude. + How the Ollie system-of-systems emerged and evolved. This is a study log. It records what was built, what was killed, and why —