Architecture

Condukt separates the agent state machine from the capabilities owned by an application. The same separation holds in both implementations: the Elixir library on the BEAM, and the Rust crates behind the terminal coding agent and the browser package.

The host boundary#

Every Condukt surface supplies three things:

Inference translates a provider-neutral completion request into a model response.
Tools define the complete set of actions the model may request.
Presentation turns messages and tool activity into a terminal, editor, browser, or another interface.

The portable session owns message history and the sequence of model and tool turns. It does not own provider credentials, network policy, filesystem access, or shell access.

One turn through the agent loop#

When a user submits a prompt, the session adds it to the conversation and creates a completion request. The host sends that request to its configured inference service.

If the model returns a final answer, the turn completes. If it requests tools, the host executes only tools registered for that surface, returns one result for every request, and asks the model to continue.

plaintext

user prompt
    ↓
completion request
    ↓
model response ── final text ──→ complete
    │
    └── tool requests ──→ host tools ──→ completion request

Different surfaces, different authority#

The terminal host can register tools that read workspace files and run commands. A public web page should usually register narrower capabilities, such as reading public repository content through fetch requests.

This boundary prevents a browser build from inheriting terminal authority merely because both surfaces share the same agent loop.

Provider-neutral state#

Completion requests contain messages and tool definitions. Provider adapters translate that shape into the service-specific request and response formats. This keeps provider authentication and transport outside the core session.

For the exact boundary, see the host interface reference in Rust, or agents and tools in Elixir, where the library drives the loop for you inside a supervised process.