Taxonomy
Twenty-one archetypes, grouped by what they do.
The taxonomy is the spine of this atlas. Phase A framed the field as spec-driven development (5 archetypes); Phase B uncovered an entire operational layer the seeds had no vocabulary for; Phase D added six more — cross-vendor routing, compiled enforcement, self-evolving plugins, token-efficient encoding, OS-level distros, and LLM-evaluated hooks. Below they're grouped by use-case, not by project phase.
§ methodology
Methodology & instruction
Frameworks that ship installable discipline — SKILL.md, slash commands, prose. Behavior comes from the prompt + a few hooks.
Zero slash commands. Iron-law SKILL.md files + a single SessionStart hook do the enforcement.
Every slash command has a matching skill file. Hooks decorate every command (before/after).
Ships structured markdown the agent reads passively. No commands, no skills, no hooks.
Prose-only artifact. Useful for taxonomy, not deployable.
§ orchestration
Multi-agent & orchestration
Spawning N agents, routing across vendors, coordinating roles. From hive-mind queens to cross-vendor Claude+GPT+Gemini chains.
Spawns N agents in parallel or hierarchical patterns. Worktrees, swarms, queens+workers.
One source compiled to outputs for Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor, etc.
Routes across Claude/GPT/Gemini/Qwen for cost arbitrage + security defense-in-depth.
§ memory
Memory & context
Where state lives across sessions. File, SQLite, Neo4j, vector DBs, HTTP-proxy intercept, and JIT semantic loaders.
Persistent cross-session memory. File, SQLite, Neo4j, vector, HTTP-proxy intercept.
On-demand context fragments via MCP. useWhen scenarios + semantic match.
Compression of context/output. rtk-token-killer's PreToolUse Bash intercept won the field.
§ governance
Governance & safety
Hooks that block, audit ledgers, compiled invariants, LLM-evaluated policy gates. Where compliance enforcement lives.
Hooks, lint, audit ledger, policy engine. Where compliance enforcement lives.
Behaviors migrate into compiled binaries. YAML→hook compiler. "Don't self-approve" as Go invariant.
The hook itself is an LLM call. type:"prompt" returns {decision:"block"} on semantic violation.
§ substrate
Execution substrate
MCP servers, IDEs, daemons, sandboxes, OS distros — the runtime layer agents call into. Sits below the agent loop, not inside it.
Value lives in a bundled MCP server; commands and skills are front-ends for MCP tools.
Full IDE (often a VS Code fork) with proprietary hook events, spec format, and pricing.
Background daemon + tracker polling + tmux PTY isolation + CI/review reaction system.
MicroVM/container/WASM runtime. Sits below the agent loop, not inside it.
Whole OS distribution scoped to agents. NixOS atomic rollback + AI root access.
§ specialized
Specialized patterns
Single-purpose archetypes that don't fit the bigger families — UI passthroughs, harness generators, self-evolving plugins.
Electron / web app that wraps underlying agents — no primitives of its own.
Generates other harnesses. Meta-framework — produces frameworks, doesn't ship one.
Linter / framework that writes PRs against itself when it observes new patterns.
§ unclassified
Unclassified
Pure stubs from broken or marketing-only repos. Kept in the corpus for completeness.
Pure stubs from broken or marketing-only repos. Kept in the corpus for completeness.