Doc role: Canonical registry spec for agent_registry. Status: Active / canonical Kind: Atomic registry Related docs:

• ../2026-02-22_registry_layer_plan.md (registry ecosystem and ownership model)
• SYSTEM_REGISTER.md (register hub and routing boundary)

Policy authority: This file is the canonical policy authority for agent_registry semantics and boundaries. Policy in this file should be distilled from canonical specs and accepted research conclusions.

1. Supervised-agent policy: Agent execution must run through supervised runtime coordination, not unmanaged threads.
2. Boundary-ingress policy: Agent outcomes cross into app state via explicit intents/signals.
3. Backpressure policy: Scheduling/load failures and throttling are explicit and diagnosable.
4. Capability-declaration policy: Agent capabilities and side-effect classes must be declared and testable.

Defines background/autonomous tasks and their scheduling contracts.

In scope:

• agent registration
• spawn and schedule contracts
• agent capability metadata

Out of scope:

• control panel worker supervision itself
• core reducer semantics
• command surface UI

This registry is a named capability surface within the Register. It should expose stable lookup and capability contracts, keep failures explicit, and avoid hidden fallback semantics.

Canonical interfaces:

• spawn(context)
• schedule(cron)
• describe_agent(id) -> AgentCapability

• Agents are explicit background capabilities, not hidden threads.
• Agent work crosses into app state through supervised intents.
• Failures and backpressure surface through diagnostics.

• policy-driven scheduling classes
• resource budgeting and pausing

• user-authored agents
• cross-mod coordination policies

• Registration, lookup, and fallback behavior are covered by registry contract tests.
• At least one harness or scenario path exercises the registry through real app behavior.
• Diagnostics channels emitted by this registry follow the Register diagnostics contract.
• Registry ownership remains explicit and does not collapse into widget-local or ad hoc fallback logic.