Your first collective

A collective is a bounded group of agents that coordinates around a mission under an explicit policy. Start locally before introducing persistence or a peer network.

1. Define agents and a mission

const mission = {
  id: 'incident-review-001',
  objective: 'Assess an incident and prepare a response brief',
  policy: { protectedActions: 'approval-required' }
}

Create specialized agents for observation, analysis and review. Give each agent only the tools and authority required for its assignment.

2. Run with bounded coordination

The collective runtime assigns work through a local coordination view. Agents do not receive every message or gain authority merely by participating in a decision.

3. Inspect the result

Capture the mission outcome together with assignment, policy and recovery evidence. The evidence is part of the operational result, not an optional log line.

See recovery semantics and evidence before connecting external side effects.