5/31/2026 at 12:43:25 AM
I think this is kinda wrong.Declarative approaches require validation to live at a synthesis layer, while an imperative approach that compiles down to declarative configs at runtime gives you the best of both worlds -- this is why anyone who does not need terraform cross compatibility will write things against CDK or Pulumi that has the same declarative schema wins with the niceness of testability and author-time typing.
Edit:
That said, it is shockingly close to the schema that we wound up with with a few ideas that I think are interesting.
reportsTo allows bottoms up orchestrator delegation
workspaces are interesting -- right now we have one bag of data with per-subagent data subscriptions, but this means that we frequently add input requirements to subagents that really should be more implicit
accessPolicy seems like a footgun to me -- i feel fairly convicted that tools should define their access scope and the only thing a subagent should know is the bag of tools available to it.
human approval seems redundant given we already have input requirements, and one can just be `email_approved` with a tool that emits the human approval request and `email_approved | email_not_approved` -- same feeling about `GateTypes` in general. If we are working on flat input-output requirements, then why do we need a specific GateType handler?
Trigger `any_approved | all_approved` is going to bite you if you move into plan solving. It is not rich enough to express XOR style relationships and I am willing to bet that v2 of your implementation splits TriggerRequirements where TriggerRequirements can be recursively applied to the type.
It seems like the tool definition is missing a lot of niceties that have been important for us -- for instance, at most once invocation. But we are working primarily over voice where there is a strong need to control execution for quality of service.
by nostrebored
5/31/2026 at 12:22:36 PM
What do you mean by "Terraform cross compatibility"? Pulumi was (initially) built upon the same underlying providers so had the same capabilities.I'd posit the main difference between the two was Terraform's declarative approach provided more consistency and predictability in how infrastructure was defined and provisioned. The constraints it imposed were the benefit vs a sprawling estate with a hundred different bespoke ways to provision a given service in your preferred language.
by glenngillen
5/31/2026 at 1:49:12 AM
On accessPolicy — sub-agents in Envelope are the tools: each defines its own access scope, the supervisor just knows what's available. Where the concern is valid is function-level tool calls — no first-class tool definition layer yet, so HTTP access scope ends up at the agent level rather than the tool.On gates — the per-record model handles dynamic output you can't pre-declare at schema time, and timeout/onReject are runtime routing decisions. The action type specifically is doing real work — irreversible step, explicit approval required before it fires.
On trigger logic: agreed. XOR isn't expressible with the current set and recursive conditions is almost certainly the v2 shape.
by ashconway
5/31/2026 at 6:52:16 AM
Read some of your other stuff. I think we're on the same track, which is interesting! Everyone in our (admittedly SF centric) circles is trying to chase this down from the model path rather than building the consistent execution layer that we believe all of these solutions will need.Wishing you luck with the project!
by nostrebored