100 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
100 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
# ollie
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What happens if agent primitives are exposed as an ordinary filesystem? How much can be subtracted from AI agent implementations without reducing their usefulness? These are some of the motivating questions behind `ollie`.
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- The [core system](https://github.com/lneely/ollie-core) provides a public library of AI agent primitives.
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- The [9p filesystem server (Go)](https://github.com/lneely/ollie-9p) creates a virtual filesystem exposing the important state and behaviors as ordinary files and operations.
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- A reference [TUI](https://github.com/lneely/ollie-tui) implementation proves that it is possible to build a functioning and user-friendly terminal front-end using only the Go standard library.
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- And, just because I like my Emacs friends, a reference [Emacs interface](https://github.com/lneely/ollie-el) front-end implementation.
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## Project Structure
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- `core/`:
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- `tui/`:
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- `9p/`:
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- `el/`:
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## Getting Started
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Clone with submodules:
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```bash
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git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/lneely/ollie.git
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```
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Or after cloning:
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```bash
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git submodule update --init --recursive
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```
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## Building
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Build everything from the monorepo root:
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```bash
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mk
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```
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Or build specific components:
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```bash
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mk core # Build core library
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mk tui # Build terminal UI
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mk 9p # Build 9p filesystem server
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```
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For Emacs Lisp, copy `el/ollie.el` into your own Emacs configuration directory, and:
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```lisp
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(require 'ollie)
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```
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## Configuration
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### Environment: `~/.config/ollie/env`
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```
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OLLIE_BACKEND=openai # ollama | openai | openrouter | anthropic | copilot | kiro (default: ollama)
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OLLIE_OLLAMA_URL= # base URL for Ollama (default: http://localhost:11434)
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OLLIE_OPENAI_URL=https://openrouter.ai/api
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OLLIE_OPENAI_KEY=sk-or-...
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OLLIE_ANTHROPIC_KEY=sk-ant-...
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OLLIE_COPILOT_TOKEN=...
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OLLIE_KIRO_TOKEN=... # bearer token or sqlite:// path (auto-detected from Kiro CLI if unset)
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OLLIE_MODEL=qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b
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OLLIE_TOOLS_PATH=~/.config/ollie/tools # directory for execute_tool scripts
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OLLIE_MEMORY_PATH=~/.config/ollie/memory # directory for memory files (ollie/m)
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```
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Shell environment variables take precedence over the env file.
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## Development
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Update all submodules to latest:
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```bash
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git submodule update --remote
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```
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## Observed Benefits
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**Filesystem as interface** — if you know how to operate a filesystem, you know how to operate ollie. Rename a session → `mv` the session directory. Start a new session → open `s/new`, fill in the fields, save. Prompt the agent → write your prompt to `s/{id}/prompt`. Check status → `cat s/{id}/state`. Any tool that reads and writes files — shell scripts, `ed`, a GUI file manager, `vim`, Python, even `cat` and `echo` — is already a fully capable ollie client. No SDK, no API, no protocol to learn.
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**Simple front-ends** — building a front-end is just reading and writing files. A TUI reads `chat`, writes `prompt`, polls `state`. A web UI does the same over a thin bridge. An Emacs mode opens files it already knows how to edit. The protocol surface is zero because the protocol *is* the filesystem.
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**Crash resiliency** — `reasoning_plan` persists plans to the `ollie/pl` filesystem by default. If a session crashes or is killed mid-task, recovery is trivial: point a fresh session at the plan that was being executed. The agent's prompting already tells it how to discover plans in `pl/`, so it can resume cold — reading the plan, seeing which steps are done and which aren't, and picking up where the previous session left off. No context replay, no manual re-prompting, no lost work.
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## Credits
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Many sources of inspiration:
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- [Plan 9 from Bell Labs](https://9fans.net) — for an interesting system
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- [@9fans](https://github.com/9fans) — for the Plan 9 port
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- [Suckless](https://suckless.org) — for articulating good software development principles
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- [@simonfxr](https://github.com/simonfxr) — for a solid agent baseline to "borrow" from, and other nifty ideas
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- [@aws](https://github.com/aws/amazon-q-developer-cli) — for a solid open-source agent implementation
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## License
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GPLv3 |