Actor Before Agent
Persistent identities, temporary inference, and evidence-bound World Patches
Most “agent” architectures begin with a running model and ask how to give it memory, personality, tools, and autonomy. That order makes identity dependent on continuous inference and encourages systems to confuse temporary computation with the person, institution, or character being represented.
The Actor–Agent Runtime reverses the order. An Actor is a durable, versioned identity and state capsule that exists when no model is running. An Agent Process is a temporary, bounded computation that wakes because the actor is relevant, receives only permitted knowledge, proposes a reaction or plan, and returns a structured World Patch. Deterministic validators check feasibility, knowledge, authority, resource, identity, and policy constraints before any accepted state change increments the actor revision.
The architecture supports persistent people, organizations, game citizens, social proxies, and institutional actors without pretending that thousands of entities are continuously thinking through an LLM. It enables multiplex inference, bounded autonomy, explainable background plans, local-model substitution, replay, and identity continuity.
The source model was developed for the game MAIN CHARACTER, but the distinction generalizes to any system in which a durable person-shaped or institution-shaped state must outlive an inference call.
Current evidence state
SPECIFIED
This label describes the strongest public-safe state of the specific paper claims. Open the paper's claim ledger for claim-level distinctions and limitations.
Publication
- Full paper:
/papers/p06-actor-before-agent - Claim ledger:
content/papers/p06-actor-before-agent/claim-ledger.json - Source manifest:
content/papers/p06-actor-before-agent/source-manifest.json - Diagrams: 4
- Approximate body length: 1,821 words
Demonstrations
d05-actor-runtime-theater
Benchmarks
b04-actor-agent-runtime
Public boundary
The research entry publishes a public-safe architecture and evidence record. It does not grant implementation rights or expose restricted claim-ready material.