The nine concepts
Agent NAS is built on nine named concepts. They answer three questions: where the work happens and what happened; who may do what and on whose say-so; and what the agent knows, how it reads and how it forgets.
The concept names are coined terms and stay in English in every language, with a gloss in the local language. Each page opens with one quotable definition and then covers the problem, the mechanism, how to start small, an interface sketch, what the specification asks for, and what is borrowed along with honest limits. The conformance level says when an implementation should support the concept; see the specification.
About “new”
Most of the nine concepts combine mature parts. Each concept page says what it borrows and what is genuinely new. The summary list is on the comparison page.
Three clusters
Work
Where does the work happen, and what happened?
- AN-01 L0 Files Agent Home A directory per role, with history. Plain files you can take with you.
- AN-02 L0 Files Agent Branch Each run works on a copy-on-write branch. Only a reviewed merge reaches the main line.
- AN-03 L1 Authority Flight Recorder A per-run, hash-linked record that includes what the run read.
Authority
Who may do what, and on whose say-so?
- AN-04 L1 Authority Capability Lease A narrow authorization for one run, with an expiry and budgets. Child leases can only be narrower.
- AN-05 L1 Authority Human Gate Appears only before irreversible, outward-facing or privilege-raising actions, and shows the real diff.
- AN-06 L3 Guard Trust Labels Two small labels plus session taint enforce the Rule of Two.
Knowledge
What does the agent know, how does it read, and how does it forget?
- AN-07 L2 Memory Agent Memory Notes you can read and edit are the truth. Indexes are a cache you can throw away.
- AN-08 L2 Memory Budgeted Reads Read a file as an outline, a section, a line range or in full, degrading to fit the budget.
- AN-09 L3 Guard Cascade Forget Delete derivatives along lineage, handle history by retention class, and report what it could not do.
Cite this page
Stable addresses and a suggested citation for people, search engines and agents.
- Canonical URL
- https://agentnas.com/concepts/
- Markdown version
- https://agentnas.com/concepts/index.md
- Suggested citation
- Agent NAS project. “The nine concepts.” agentnas.com, 2026-11-11. https://agentnas.com/concepts/