Agents and runtime Pods

An Agent is a durable organizational identity. Its current Pod and harness process are replaceable runtime realizations of that identity.

Persistent First and Second Mates use StatefulSet-derived workloads with stable homes. Crewmates are bounded to one Assignment but still preserve home and worktree state long enough to survive runtime replacement and complete delivery. Kubernetes names what is running; PostgreSQL names who owns work; Herdr names the live native session.

PostgreSQL Agent identity
        │
        ├── Kubernetes workload
        ├── PVC home + worktrees + private memory
        └── Herdr Agent → native harness session

These references must agree before mutation. A pane title, old Pod name or chat transcript cannot substitute for authenticated Agent identity. Runtime preparation clones the image’s immutable AgentOS seed into the writable persistent home without hard links, preserving configured remotes.

Replacement reuses the same identity and home. The release’s runtime procedure owns the exact provisioning and recovery shape.