a project

Metnos

by Roberto Brunialti
An architecture for agents. And the attempt to make their power governable.
μῆτις + νοῦς — mêtis (the mind that adapts) + noûs (the mind that reasons): the two Greek words for mind, joined into one name. · technical project name: metnos

If you would like the how after the why, three doors. The note on the code (Code) answers where is the beef?

Quick tour & Survival kit 20 min Architecture handbook visual tutorial Code note

Metnos is the project of a self-hosted architecture for governed agents. Its reference installation can act as a personal or household assistant, but that is one executor set, not the definition of the system: another admitted catalog can serve software maintenance, research, remote systems or another bounded operational domain. The core plans, judges, remembers and audits; executors define what can actually be done. The interesting part is therefore not only the code but the prior definition: which powers exist, which limits they honour, and in what vocabulary the system addresses the human who governs it.

A word of respect

Neighbouring ideas have already been explored by openclaw and zeroclaw. It is from them that this project draws courage, and to them goes, first of all, my acknowledgement. Metnos does not wish to be a clone: it is a starting point for experimenting with a few specific ideas — the distinction between laws and ends, the separation between whoever proposes and whoever judges, the care not to turn usefulness into intrusion. A testing ground, not a solution.

What you will find here

Not the code. Good code, someone will write better than me — and that is fine. Here you will find the documents: the architecture, the decisions, the days of reflection. The process of definition, not the product. A reader of these texts receives, on closer look, a more durable object than any implementation: a set of motivated choices, and a way of reasoning that can be reused elsewhere. And in the end, yes, also the code — but only the code that is needed to reassure the author and the reader that ideas must, sooner or later, find their way into reality.

The author and the machine

This project has been written with the constant help of an artificial intelligence system. Much of what you are reading, the SVG figures, the tables and the component contracts, were born from a dialogue with a machine that held the pen when mine grew tired. It is not merely a confession: it is part of the point of the project itself. Metnos explores an architecture that gives wings to the people who govern it, so that they can focus on analysis rather than execution. Building its definition with an agent is already, in miniature, a proof of concept. A recursive experiment.

Dialogues

The dialogues are the trace of the thought behind Metnos, put under the pressure of objection: not treatises, not specifications, but ideas compelled to answer an uncomfortable peer. The form is Galilean — two voices, both the author's, one of which refuses to give easy agreement. Not fiction: only the structure is dialogic, the content is real.

Dialogue on ends and limits

Roberto and The Other, in four Giornate. From how the need for ultimate ends first arises, to the cardinal sentence — the Constitution does not judge; teleology does.

Enter
reflection · 25 min read
· · ·

Dialogue on executors and distributed memory

Four Giornate. What a system that does not learn can remember; whether Metnos is an organism, a mirror, or an ecology; the emergent shape of the mnestome, read through network medicine; and the final test — the six principles that hold the rest together and the technical specification as the next step. Executors, mnests, traces, ager, the table.

Enter
reflection · Giornate I–IV · complete

The whole corpus

For anyone
Quick tour & Survival kit — Metnos in 15–20 minutes Seven scenes from ordinary life (including one of organic growth: twelve photo requests that mature into a spontaneous proposal of two new executors), a sample terminal dialogue, interface mock-ups, how it grows and how it ages, what it asks and what it will never do, day 1, essential commands, mini glossary. No jargon.
20 min
Foundations
Architecture handbook One visual tutorial from the system's purpose and request flow to executor authority and the exact contracts of every component. Inline SVG diagrams, printable as PDF.
20 min
Judgement and vision
Perspectives and judgement The design analysed from four expert angles, seven blocking critiques, the reordered work plan.
20 min
Extended perspectives From reactive assistant to ambient intelligence. Five families of capabilities, plus Telos as a foundation.
20 min
Reflection
Dialogue on ends and limits Four Giornate on proactivity, laws and tendencies, who judges the judge, guard and judge. With a mythological prologue that reads Metnos as a creature at risk of hybris.
25 min
Dialogue on executors and distributed memory Second dialogue, complete in four Giornate: memory without learning (executors, mnests, the mnestome); organism or mirror (the five sources of creativity, the table); the shape of the table (modularity, traces, network medicine); does it hold? (ager, freeze, defuse, seed, the six principles).
I–IV · complete
Reference
Glossary About 35 entries in alphabetical order: technical terms, components, external projects of inspiration (openclaw, zeroclaw), foundational concepts (telos, vaglio, LLM abstraction, hybris).
reference
Component contracts

The handbook includes the complete component atlas. From there, each component name opens its canonical implementation contract: schemas, calls, authority, failure conditions and conformance checks.

And now, the code too. The repository is public — the run-essential subset of the live instance, with installer and architecture: github.com/brunialti/metnos (AGPL-3.0). The documents remain the most precious part; the code, now, is there to confirm them. The note on code →

External references