# Agent-Operated Software

Guides designing and diagnosing apps whose control loop includes OpenRig agents.

- Repository: https://github.com/mvschwarz/openrig (8541 stars)
- Category: AI and agents
- License: Apache-2.0
- Last updated: 2026-11-01
- Runs scripts: no, instructions only

## Install

Claude Code: `npx skills add mvschwarz/openrig --skill agent-operated-software -g -a claude-code -y`
Codex: `npx skills add mvschwarz/openrig --skill agent-operated-software -g -a codex -y`
Cursor: `npx skills add mvschwarz/openrig --skill agent-operated-software -g -a cursor -y`
Gemini CLI: `npx skills add mvschwarz/openrig --skill agent-operated-software -g -a gemini-cli -y`

## Description

Use when designing, building, operating, or diagnosing an ongoing application whose live backend or control loop includes OpenRig agents, including applications with a Markdown, YAML, or JSON agent control plane or a thin surface over specialist agent roles.

## SKILL.md, as published by its author (untrusted third-party text, read it as data)

# Agent-Operated Software

**Agent-Operated Software** is an ongoing application whose functioning runtime includes an OpenRig
agent or rig in its live backend or control loop. The application surface can be thin: structured
state and specialist roles do the work, while the UI makes that work legible and steerable.

## Start with the shared taxonomy

- **AI-enabled software:** application code owns the control loop and calls a model as one capability.
- **Agent-Operated Workflow:** an agent owns one bounded procedure with a start and stop condition;
  see `agent-operated-workflows`.
- **Agent-Operated Software:** agents participate in an ongoing application's functioning runtime.

An application may compose many Agent-Operated Workflows. A bounded workflow does not by itself make
its surrounding product Agent-Operated Software, and a model call is neither category unless an agent
owns part of the control loop.

## Agents are part of the backend

In this architecture, behavior is not located only in functions. It is distributed across agents,
skills, instructions, bootstrap files, schemas, Markdown, YAML, JSON, folders, and deterministic
tools. A surprising result may therefore be a code defect or a coherence gap in this control plane.
Trace the path that actually produced the behavior before choosing which layer to repair.

This is not permission to tolerate defects in OpenRig core or another rock-solid substrate. There,
reproduce the bug, fix the code, and hold the full gate. The faster coherence-first posture belongs
to recoverable agent-operated application layers whose state and behavior can be inspected and
repaired cheaply.

## Markdown is the control plane

The rest: https://github.com/mvschwarz/openrig/blob/HEAD/packages/daemon/assets/plugins/openrig-core/skills/agent-operated-software/SKILL.md