Your AI team
A Cabinet agent is a markdown file with a heartbeat. The file lives at .agents/<slug>/persona.md. Edit it, and the agent updates. Delete it, and the agent disappears. Git tracks every change.
That's the whole mental model. Everything below is what those files can do.
What an agent has
| Piece | What it is | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Persona | The system prompt + identity | .agents/<slug>/persona.md |
| Memory | Things the agent has learned about you and the work | .agents/<slug>/memory.md |
| Heartbeats | Recurring check-ins on a schedule | YAML inside persona.md |
| Skills | Reusable instruction packs the agent can pull in | .agents/skills/<name>/SKILL.md |
| Workspace | Where their outputs land | Any folder you point them at |
| Model | Which provider runs them | Set in persona.md, override per task |
Three rhythms a team runs on
- A task is one piece of work that runs once.
- A routine is a task on a schedule.
- A heartbeat is a recurring check-in the agent uses to decide what to do next.
Heartbeats are the difference between an assistant you have to summon and a teammate who shows up.
The dispatch and approval loop
A lead agent can propose work for the rest of the team — launch a task for the researcher, schedule a job for the marketer, queue a one-off for the editor. Every proposal goes through the Approval Queue before anything runs. You approve, change the model or effort, or reject.
Read on
- Persona — the full
persona.mdschema. - Heartbeats — recurring check-ins.
- Routines — scheduled tasks.
- Tasks — the kanban board.
- Conversations & approvals — the safety story.
- Delegating between agents — leads, specialists, departments.
- Skills — installable instruction packs.
- BYOAI — bring your own AI provider.
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