Looped Agent Framework

Looped AF — a Docker-native, config-driven framework for building single-purpose, event-driven AI agents that automate business processes.

Start with the Manifesto. Three minutes; it's the whole philosophy.

The idea: an agent is a file — one file that says the job, the model, the tools, and the boundaries — and deploying it is a docker run. Agents are long-running services that sit in a loop — wait for an event (a Discord message, a webhook, a cron tick), do their one job, deliver the result, go idle.

handle: issue-bot     # agents name themselves; you just pick the handle
description: Turns team Discord messages into GitHub issues.
model: { provider: openai-compatible, id: gpt-5.4-mini }
triggers:
  - type: discord
    channels: ["issues"]
skills:
  - ./skills/gh-issues.md
permissions:
  net: [discord.com, gateway.discord.gg, api.github.com]
  run: [gh]

What's here

• The af CLI — af init scaffolds a complete agent project (agent, secrets template, deployment shape); af validate checks it; af run runs it — an interactive REPL without triggers, a long-lived service with them.
• Triggers — Discord, Slack, and Telegram (including observer agents), webhook, cron.
• Capability, added deliberately — markdown skills, MCP servers, a small native toolset, and tool search to keep schemas out of a small model's context.
• Deny-by-default permissions — allowlisted hosts, executables, and paths; scoped secrets that never enter the model's context; every decision in a SQLite audit trail.
• Docker-native deployment — the hardened ghcr.io/loopedautomation/agent base image, the one-apk add custom-image recipe, file-less env-var deploys, and a status surface (/healthz, /runs, /audit).
• Budgets by default — every run has a step cap, and cheap models are the default, so spending stays predictable.

Docs

Published at docs.looped.sh/agent-framework, authored in docs/:

Quick start · The agent file · Triggers · Skills · Tools · Permissions · Deployment · CLI

Or start from a complete, runnable agent: the examples go from a minimal REPL bot to the Discord → GitHub gh-issues-cli (docker compose up) and the agent-zero — the agent that builds agents.

Runtime: Deno + TypeScript. Pre-1.0, built in the open.