202: Idea/Vessel

A Vessel Idea is a complete, self-contained snapshot of an agent's immediate reaction to a stimulus. It is more than just a log of what happened; it is a rich artifact that contains the full context of the decision, making it auditable, adaptable, and reusable.

1. The Anatomy of a Reaction

A Vessel Idea uses the core Idea triplet to capture both the potential for action and the action itself:

• context (The Stimulus): This contains the input that triggered the agent's reaction.
• schema (The Definition): This defines the agent's entire reactive capability in that moment. It describes every Tool the agent could have used, typically as a oneOf schema.
• solution (The Instance): This is the record of what the agent actually did. It's an array containing the specific Calls—concrete instances of the Tools from the schema—that were chosen and executed.

Because a Vessel contains both the universe of possibilities (schema) and the specific outcome (solution), it provides a complete picture of a decision-making event.

2. The Power of Self-Contained Decisions

This self-contained structure is what enables the system's advanced capabilities. By packaging the definition with the instance, a Vessel Idea inherently supports:

• Human Verification and Adjustment: A person can review a Vessel and see not only what the agent did, but what it could have done. They can then approve the action, or modify the solution by choosing different Calls from the provided schema.
• Replanning: If a Call fails, the agent can re-evaluate the situation. It already has the full context and the complete schema of its options, allowing it to easily select an alternative Call and generate a new Vessel.
• Reusability: A Vessel can be used as a template or example for future decisions in similar contexts.

2.1. Interactive Time Travel

Because a Vessel Idea is a complete, self-contained, and immutable snapshot, it enables a form of interactive time travel. By loading a Vessel from the past, one can interact with the agent exactly as it existed at that moment.

The schema guarantees that the agent's capabilities are frozen in time; even if the live agent has since been upgraded with new Tools, the historical Vessel will only present the options that were available when it was created. This allows a user or another agent to:

• Replay History: Perfectly reconstruct a past decision.
• Explore Alternatives: Provide a different context to the historical Vessel to run "what-if" scenarios, exploring how that past version of the agent would have reacted to different inputs.

This provides a powerful mechanism for debugging, auditing, and understanding the evolution of an agent's behavior over time.

3. The Vessel in the Execution Loop

A Vessel represents a single, tactical tick of the execution loop. It is the decision made and recorded within one iteration. The results of its Calls are then fed back into the context for the next tick, potentially leading to a new Vessel.

This reactive pattern is powerful for building agents that can respond intelligently to real-time events. However, it is not designed for orchestrating complex, multi-step tasks that require memory and long-term strategy.

4. From Reactive Moments to Proactive Plans

While a Vessel provides a complete record of a single reaction, achieving larger goals requires a structure for proactive, multi-step execution. This is the role of a Process Idea, which applies the same principles of self-containment to a strategic, stateful workflow.