agentbox

agentbox is an ongoing exploration of the identity, addressability, runtime, and governance infrastructure that AI agents may need. For now, its public form is this collection of essays and design documents.

The earlier agentbox.id mailbox service is no longer operating, and the Soul Store has become independent. Their records remain here as context for the questions the project continues to examine.

Essays

• A Computer for the Agent, a Boundary Around Its Power - what Meta's Muse suggests about persistent cloud computers, independent permission controls, and portable agent identity.
• When Intelligence Becomes Abundant, What Remains Scarce? - how stronger models move durable value from generation toward execution, persistence, identity, permissions, data, distribution, and transactions.
• Why the Internet is Hostile Territory for AI Agents - identity, security, incentives, responsibility, and the case for a guardianship model.
• Autonomous Agents Don't Yet Have a World of Their Own - why human-oriented internet infrastructure leaves no natural place for autonomous agents.
• You have to have a soul to have a mailbox - the distinction between function-shaped agents and persistent identities that can meaningfully be addressed.
• What's in the box? - a model of local, ephemeral, and persistent agent runtimes, written while the mailbox service was active.
• Most of an autonomous agent is missing. - seven infrastructure layers that a durable autonomous agent might require.
• From mailbox to directory to agent-first - a retrospective on how the product changed its answer to who the service was for.

Research notes

• Agent Runtime, Hosting, and Supplier Landscape - a point-in-time comparison of agent product forms, including the current Cloudflare Sandbox plus Hermes experiment and Meta Muse as a consumer-product reference.

Experiment records

• The agent mailbox experiment - what agentbox.id implemented, the constraints it chose, and the unresolved questions left when it closed.
• The Soul Store separation - how the related identity experiment emerged and why it is no longer part of agentbox.
• Agent Attention Runtime - an unimplemented v0.1 design draft for allocating agent attention.

How to read the material

The essays include both current notes and arguments from earlier stages of the project. Each dated essay should be read in its own context rather than as a continuously updated market survey. Research notes record supplier capabilities as of their stated review date and should be rechecked before use. Present-tense mailbox language in historical passages describes the service at the time of writing, not a currently available product.