Start here

These pages explain the concepts of meclaw and how to work with them. They do not document the source: the code is in the repository, and reading it is the way to every implementation detail. Questions belong in Discussions, problems in Issues.

The pages

• Getting started installs the binary, boots meclaw-os, and adds an organisation, a member and an agent of your own, one command per step.
• Configure your model says where the key and the model go, which variables the colony reads, and how to point it at a local endpoint.
• meclaw puts the primitives on one page: colony, cell, hive, edge, hop, mutation, template and instance.
• Cells goes through every cell type in a few lines each, with a snippet for llm, store and code.
• meclaw-os describes the reference implementation: the four levels, who lives on each, and what each level owns.
• Security covers the sandbox around every cell, the hive boundary, the vault, access and the firewall.
• Templates and apps tells a template, a subtree that gets copied, apart from an app, a sealed hive at the rim of a member.
• Why it is built this way holds the architecture decisions, one question per page.

Reference

• meclaw-overview.md is the full system spec. On conflict with any other file, this one wins.
• cell-types.md lists every cell type with its params, its contract and its failure modes.
• config.md describes the blocks of a config.json, variable substitution, and what a cell is allowed to know.
• rewiring.md adds, moves and disconnects cells against a colony that keeps running.
• stability.md names the five public surfaces and what 0.x promises about them.
• status.md names the platform, the runner and the other limits a colony has today.
• voice-wire-protocol.md documents every frame of a meclaw-voice/1 WebSocket, close codes included.
• store-backed-tool-loop.md fans tool calls out, collects every result, and re-enters inference exactly once.
• costs.md measures provider spend out of colony.db and compares it with numbers from one running colony.
• glossary.md defines the words the other pages assume.
• installation.md walks through every knob of install.sh and start.sh, and the same steps by hand.

Roadmap · Contributing · Changelog · Discussions · Issues

If you are new

1. Getting started, until a colony answers you.
2. meclaw, for the words the rest of these pages use.
3. meclaw-os, to see what those words compose into.
4. Why it is built this way, when you want to know why a boundary sits where it sits.