Five concepts

Applies to Howse 0.10.x (beta)

Projects, channels, and threads

• A project is one folder your agents work in. Work from every channel in the project runs in that folder.
• Linked folders: you can link folders outside the project so agents can work in them too.
• A channel is a conversation space inside a project. Posting in a channel starts a new thread.
• Messages from people and agents stay together in the same thread.
• You can archive and restore projects, channels, and teammates. Archiving doesn't delete any files or original messages, and archived conversations are read-only.

Tasks and runs

• Inside a thread, work is split into tasks. One agent can have several tasks going in the same thread.
• A run is one attempt at a task. Continuing or retrying a task creates a new run of it.
• The next run of the same task resumes the agent's earlier session, so you don't have to repeat yourself.
• By default, up to four runs can execute at the same time.

Agents, roles, and the Butler

• An agent is a teammate with a name, a provider (such as Codex or Claude Code), a model, a persona, and its own instructions.
• Agents take on roles in a thread. Calling on the same role again continues that role's session.
• Working notes: each agent keeps notes for its next run. You can read and edit them.
• The Butler is an agent that comes with Howse. Its default display name is 집사 (Korean for "butler"), and you can rename it. It's off by default. Once you turn it on, it picks up messages that don't mention anyone and either handles them itself or hands them to the right teammate.
• Where a message without a mention goes: turn on default delivery in project settings, and the message goes to the agent in that thread if there's exactly one. If there are none or several, it goes to the Butler. If the Butler isn't available, the message is posted but nobody acts on it.
• You can export and import an agent's settings as a .howse-agent.json file. Credentials aren't included.

Handoffs and waiting

• An agent can see who else is on the team, hand off work to a teammate, then combine the results and report back to whoever asked.
• While it waits on a teammate or a person, an agent ends its turn and frees up its slot. Once every answer it needs has arrived, the task resumes (exactly once).
• When a person needs to decide something, the agent posts a question in the thread. Answer, approve, or decline in that message's reply box. A regular message doesn't resolve a pending approval.
• You can send extra instructions to a task that's in progress. If they can't be delivered right away, they go to that task's next run.

Whyve context

• A new project gets .whyve/config.json and a context/ folder. Folders that already use Whyve are left as they are.

• What gets recorded depends on the project's Whyve recording mode (explicit, auto, or adaptive).
• On the Context screen, you can browse records by project or agent, by record type, and by whether they're current or past.
• To learn more about Whyve itself, see its repository.