the rig that runs the loop

The lathe of the intellectual revolution.

GPUs are the new steam engines. Neural networks are the new power. looprig is the machinery that turns that power into dependable, governed, useful work: an agent harness of stdlib-first Go modules, for agents you own and can change.

install go get github.com/looprig/harness
fig. 1   the rig that runs the loop
plate 02  /  the rhyme of history see NORTH_STAR
the industrial revolution the intellectual revolution
the engine the steam engine GPUs and TPUs
the power mechanical power from heat knowledge and reasoning at scale
the machinery the lathe, mother of machine tools looprig, the agent harness
what it makes precise, repeatable parts for other machines durable, confined, gated, transparent work

The steam engine supplied the power. The lathe made the power useful.

plate 03  /  the mental model three parts
  1. 3.1 loop

    Defines one agent: its model, instructions, tools, and permissions.

  2. 3.2 rig

    Assembles one or more Loops with storage and lifecycle policy.

  3. 3.3 session

    One running instance of a Rig. Submit work, observe events, answer gates, resume after process death.

test record t-014  /  durability certification

transcript
$ coderig
> migrate billing tests to testify
▸ session 019823a1 · turn 1 · harness/loop
▸ tool: bash · go test ./billing/...
◼ gate: bash wants write access · waiting for a human
✓ approved · gate recorded in journal
✗ process killed (kill -9)
$ coderig --resume 019823a1-7b3c-4d5e-8f90-123456789abc
✓ journal replayed · 14 events · nothing lost
▸ turn 1 resumes exactly where it stopped
plate 04  /  the five properties spec, normative
  1. 01

    durable

    Work survives crashes, restarts, and long pauses.

    Every turn is journaled as it happens. Sessions suspend, restore, and resume across process death, proven by an external cross-repo suite against a real store.

  2. 02

    confined

    Intelligence acts only within explicit boundaries enforced by the OS.

    Not prompt-level guardrails: Seatbelt on macOS; namespaces, Landlock, seccomp, nftables, and cgroups on Linux. What the platform cannot enforce is reported honestly.

  3. 03

    gated

    Human judgment stays present wherever consequence demands it.

    Approval gates are a durable primitive, not a UI feature. A gate can be answered minutes or days later, even after a restart, and the loop resumes exactly where it paused.

  4. 04

    transparent

    Every consequential action is observable, explainable, and auditable.

    An append-only journal is the source of truth for everything the agent did: what it saw, what it ran, who approved it, and what it cost.

  5. 05

    independent

    The rig outlasts models, vendors, machines, and environments.

    A provider-neutral inference contract, storage behind small interfaces, and OS confinement with no framework lock-in. The engines change. The lathe remains.

These are not accessories added after an agent becomes capable. They are the precision machinery that makes capability useful.

plate 05  /  the rig fig. 2

surfaces

tui terminal, today
web ui your framework
desktop tauri
headless policy

svelte / react / vue / angular / solid / plain ts, one client core

serve /v1, http + sse

the heart

harness loop, session, gates, journal, tool contracts, serve /v1
contracts, in process

rig partners

core shared vocabulary: content, uuid, logging
inference neutral model contract
llm provider policy and batteries
storage ledger, lease, kv, blobs: fsstore, natsstore, rclonestore
tools standard tools, chosen one at a time
sandbox + confinement OS enforcement: Seatbelt, Landlock, seccomp
flow durable workflows

fig. 2   one harness, replaceable parts

plate 06  /  yours to own parts list
part your choice
models and providers any provider behind one neutral contract; local, cloud, or TEE
instructions and knowledge yours, versioned with your code
tools and permissions select standard tools one at a time, or write your own
storage single-host disk, NATS JetStream, or any object store via rclone
interface terminal TUI, web, or fully headless
where it runs laptop, server, or fleet; one static binary

Production-grade does not mean enterprise-only. An agent you rely on should not forget its work after a crash, touch things outside its boundaries, act without approval when consequences matter, or hide what it did. Those properties matter for one person with one laptop as much as for a fleet.

plate 07  /  the work ahead

The engines will change.
We will continue to be the lathe.

Build your first agent.

install go get github.com/looprig/harness