Agent Overview

An agent is a persistent AI identity with its own role, model, workspace, and memory. Agents are the core building block of Reeve — they do the work.

What Makes an Agent

Every agent has:

Roles

Roles provide sensible defaults so you don't have to configure everything from scratch:

Roles are starting points — you can override any default per agent.

Single vs Multi-Agent

Single Agent

The simplest setup: one agent handles everything. Good for personal use, small teams, or getting started.

You ←→ Reeve (assistant)

Multi-Agent

For complex work, agents specialize and coordinate:

Coordinator
  ├── Marketing Manager
  │     ├── Content Writer (worker)
  │     └── Ad Analyst (worker)
  └── Engineering Manager
        ├── Frontend Dev (worker)
        └── Backend Dev (worker)

Managers spawn workers for parallel execution, coordinate results, and report back. Workers are cheap (Sonnet) and reset quickly. Managers and coordinators maintain longer context.

See Multi-Agent for the full coordination system.

Built-in vs Custom Agents

Built-in

Every Reeve installation starts with a default agent (typically assistant role). This agent is ready to go with sensible defaults — you just need an LLM API key.

Custom

Create agents tailored to specific roles:

reeve agents add

The interactive wizard asks for:

• Name — A human-readable name (e.g., "Marketing Manager")
• Role — One of the five built-in roles
• Model — Which LLM to use
• Workspace — Where to store config and memory

Or create agents from the Cockpit at Settings → Agents → New Agent.

Agent Lifecycle

Create → Configure → Active → [Sessions, Memory, Goals] → Archive/Delete

1. Create — Via CLI wizard or Cockpit UI
2. Configure — Set model, tools, heartbeat, workspace files
3. Active — Agent responds to messages, runs heartbeats, executes goals
4. Memory grows — Daily logs accumulate, MEMORY.md gets curated
5. Archive/Delete — When no longer needed

Agents persist across gateway restarts. Their memory, configuration, and workspace survive indefinitely.