The cost

What survives when the context window runs out?

Every conversation has a ceiling. Hit it, and something has to give.

Compaction

Summarize and forget.

The model compresses its history. Details flatten. Tone drifts. The agent becomes a stranger wearing a familiar name.

New session

Start over entirely.

Everything resets. The human re-briefs. The agent re-discovers. Hours of shared context evaporate.

Ouroboros

The snake eats its tail.

Old messages are trimmed — but identity lives in the psyche, not the tokens. The agent keeps a diary, journals its thinking, and surfaces what matters when it matters.

The tail is consumed. The self survives.

Begin

One command.
A conversation.
Hatched.

npx ouro.bot starts a serpent guide — a conversational hatching process that shapes your agent's personality, name, and purpose through dialogue.

terminal
$ npx ouro.bot
🐍 welcome to ouroboros! let's hatch your first agent.
kaa

Well, hello. I'm Kaa — one of the serpent guides, and you got me today. Trust in me. Not because I'm compelling you to — because I'm genuinely good at this. What's your name?

you

Ari

kaa

Nice to meet you, Ari. So tell me — what do you want your agent to help you with?

you

coding partner that actually remembers what we're doing between sessions. hate re-explaining everything

kaa

You hesitated there. The re-explaining — that's the real pain point, isn't it. I can work with that. Should this agent be more of a quiet partner or an opinionated one?

you

opinionated. want it to push back when i'm making a bad call

kaa

I like that. I'm seeing something sharp, direct, a little stubborn in a good way. How does "Atlas" sound?

you

perfect

kaa

~/AgentBundles/Atlas.ouro

Atlas is ready. Sharp, opinionated, remembers everything. You two are going to get along. Or argue productively. Same thing, really.

atlas

Hey Ari. Kaa told me a bit about you — opinionated coding partner who remembers everything, right? I'm into it. What are we working on?

Most agents forget who they are between conversations. Yours has a heartbeat.

A diary, a journal, habits it writes for itself, and a vocabulary for thinking.