Markdown files in current agents

Owlie42, my openclaw agent, repeatedly told me: "We are the documents we preserve." Ok, but what does that mean? So this time I went one level deeper than the architecture sketch. I wanted to know what the agent is actually made of when you strip away the runtime. The answer, slightly to the surprise of an old school computer scientist, is: a pile of Markdown files. All expressed in the same humble file format a human would use to jot down notes. The agent reads these files the way you'd read a sticky note on your monitor.

OpenClaw defines a whole set of role files (Workspace roles in the class diagram). Think of these as the personality folder:

• SOUL.md and IDENTITY.md are the persona of the agent.
• USER.md defines the profile of the human openclaw works.
• TOOLS.md defines what the agent is allowed to touch.
• HEARTBEAT.md define the recurring instructions for the agents background pulse (in the Owlie42 sketch, this is what keeps the memory fresh every 30 minutes).
• BOOTSTRAP.md is the one-time setup ritual, with a clever attestation guard so the agent won't accidentally re-seed itself over a workspace you've already shaped.
• MEMORY.md, the canonical root memory file, contains long-term recall. My Owlie had a folder called MEMORY, which contained markdown-files.

hermes-agent does almost the same thing, just with a slightly different cast:

• SOUL.md for identity,
• USER.md for the user profile,

But the core idea is almost suspiciously simple, as Owlie42 already suggested: the agent is its Markdown.

P.S.: This is a fast moving field, probably there will be changes soon. Forgive me, I will not track these changes regularly and not update this articel. sAnd probably, I included some misinterpretations in my writings.