OpenAgents

We are rebuilding OpenAgents from a small, checked core. The repository was reset on 2026-10-27. What is here now is the base everything else will be built on:

• Coax, the language;
• Verse, the real-time engine, written in it;
• one protocol that every OpenAgents surface speaks;
• openagents.com, drawn in Coax in the browser;
• a native iOS app that runs Coax today.

What we're building

• Coax (coax/) is a systems language for real-time and money-handling code.
  • coax0 is its bootstrap compiler, written in C++20. It emits plain C11, so a Coax library links into Swift, C or C++ hosts. It can also emit Metal shader functions.
  • Compile-time code runs in a bounded evaluator, and checks are part of the language. #test and #forall run while compiling. #authority makes every procedure in a file need a check. coax mutate checks that the checks catch real changes.
  • The specification and a book describe the language and say which parts exist today.
• Verse (verse/) is the engine. The home scene, its graph, its HUD and its resource admission are Coax (home.coax), and so is its shader math (light.coax). Start opens the Grid (grid.coax), where you walk (player.coax) as an animated character among patrolling robots (cast.coax). A thin C and Swift layer owns storage and the GPU. The same name covers the world and experience the engine runs: the Verse, made of realms such as the Haunted House (Verse protocol, engine notes).
• The OpenAgents Protocol (spec, schemas in proto/) defines the interchange for web, mobile, desktop, agents, cloud hosts, payments and Verse.
  • Published contracts keep their identity.
  • New schemas are alpha.
  • Coax reads selected descriptors with #import_proto and generates bounded codecs from them.
• Nostr is the open transport. nips/ pins the official and external NIPs we follow, next to our own.
• openagents.com (apps/openagents-web/) runs on Coaxial, the Coax web framework (design, tools in coax/web/). Coax compiles to WebAssembly, a small generic host draws with WebGPU, and every visible thing on a page is Coax.
  • /realms/haunted-house: the Verse engine's Haunted House realm in the browser, the same Coax as on iOS.
  • /projects lists projects. /projects/coax shows the Coax roadmap and Nostr work as signed Nostr events: the queue, who is on what, their plans, and each task's detail (protocol, how to work the queue). /projects/verse tracks the port of the playtest infrastructure.
  • Each page has an index.md beside it for agents.
  • Releases go through coax/web/release.sh: a clean build of origin/main goes to staging, is smoked and walked, promoted to production and checked again (briefly by default, the full walk with --thorough), with automatic rollback.
• The iOS app (apps/openagents-ios/) is a minimal native home: the animated graph and HUD, running in Coax. Start opens the Grid, the bare Verse world, to walk around in. It ships to the owner's TestFlight group as com.openagents.app.

What's next

• A Lightning wallet in the iOS app, on Breez's Spark SDK, with the payment rules in a checked Coax file (docs/lightning/). Money is Bitcoin only: Lightning, on-chain, Spark and Taproot Assets.
• Verification grows with the code (plan):
  • fuzzing with emitted coverage;
  • pinned test vectors for Nostr and BIPs;
  • sanitizer runs.
• More of the engine and app in Coax. Each piece is ported only when its checks exist first.

Try it

coax/build.sh test                              # build coax0 and run its tests
coax/bin/coax run coax/examples/mandelbrot.coax
coax/bin/coax test coax/examples/money.coax     # checks written before the code
coax/bin/coax mutate coax/examples/money.coax   # every mutant must fail a check
apps/openagents-ios/build.sh                    # the iOS app, for the simulator
coax/web/serve.sh apps/openagents-web          # openagents.com locally, with hot reload

Agents working here start with AGENTS.md and INVARIANTS.md. Talks and episode notes are in docs/transcripts/.