frame accepted goes to: this-edition A all three
A role is a model with a description and a question; an agent is that role on a loop with a goal
The editor, the publisher, the journalist, the librarian on this site are each almost a raw model plus a role file (who you are, what you care about, what you refuse, how you work) and a question. An agent is the role on a loop with an objective: do the task, ask whether it is done, go round again; planning, checks and limits are added on that skeleton.
Decided by. Dinis, in Lenses, roles and loops; the editor records it in the vault
Note. Sits next to an-agent-is-a-session-with-a-focus; the hands-on part gets a tiny agent loop (editor's task 3).
Where it comes from
- Lenses, roles and loops A role is a model with a description; An agent is a loop with a goal (article)
- How I work with Claude an agent as a focused session with a role file (newsroom)
- Lenses, roles and loops Precisely: a model plus instructions, tools, a loop and a rule for stopping (article)
What it answers in the 2018 book
- none named
Where it goes
Chapter Lenses, roles and loops, part The frame (drafting); topic How to work with agents: briefs, voice, one shared state.
Other ideas proposed for the same chapter: A prompt is a lens: translating into another language is, to a model, the same as explaining for a teenager or a doctor, Tools changed everything: the model answers with a request, the program runs it, and the result goes into the next request, The model remembers nothing between requests: every request carries the whole conversation, which is why there is a context window, Long chats are compressed into a lower-resolution summary, so details drop out: work in many focused threads with named agents.
Node idea:a-role-is-a-model-with-a-description in graph.json; see it in the graph. Source: admin/content/graph/ideas.json.