Foundry Service

Defines, starts, and stops agents — always-on ones as harness Deployments, swarm members as Jobs — and gives people and agents the same tools to build new ones.

Foundry: The service that owns agents: each one's definition, the tools it is granted, and whether it is running. People and agents build new agents through the same Foundry tools. owns agent definitions, start and stop, the wake inbox, and the harness process. Persistent agents are the list you edit in the intelligence-app Foundry workspace. Ephemeral members belong to a swarm or a coding run, and only an agent creates one. You reach them from the Ephemeral tab of the agent that spawned them, where they can be stopped and started.

A person in the Flow Intelligence Desktop App and an agent granted the Foundry tools can also create, edit, start, and stop agents, through the same API the console uses.

Domain: Services
Kind: Go HTTP service
Lifecycle: Active
flowctl project: None
Stacks: Runs on its own
Source: services/foundry

Run it locally

Port 8128, Dev Auth, create, start, and wake.

Architecture

Lifetime, run type, Deployments versus Jobs, and the wake loop.

Building and managing agents

The nine Foundry tools, what a builder agent can do, and building one from the Flow Intelligence Desktop App.

API

Agents, skills, harnesses, swarm, wake, inbox, and runs.

Daily briefs

One morning job writes the CEO brief for AJ Nead, Sara Garner, Ilan, and Adam Neumann and stores the text.

Operations

Local processes, shared images, separate deployments, and rollout.

Lifetime × run type

	`on_demand`	`always_on`
`persistent`	No pod. `POST /v1/agents/on-demand/{slug}` with a Cloudflare JWT and a one-time secret	Deployment up; comms / manual / dream / harvest
`ephemeral`	Spawn for the call, then expire	Runs the task, then the harness stops and status becomes `expired`

The workspace creates persistent agents only. An ephemeral agent comes from a swarm spawn or spawn_coding_agent.

Diagram source

flowchart LR
  UI["intelligence-app Foundry"]
  API[foundry-api]
  Persist["always-on Deployment"]
  Call["POST /v1/agents/on-demand/slug"]
  Ephem["harness Job"]
  Intel[intelligence]
  Comms[communications]

  UI -->|"list edit start restart delete"| API
  API -->|"always-on start"| Persist
  Caller -->|"JWT plus one-time secret"| Call
  Call --> API
  Persist -->|"spawn swarm"| API
  API -->|"ephemeral up then down"| Ephem
  Persist --> Intel
  Ephem --> Intel
  Persist --> Comms
  Ephem --> Comms
  Comms -->|"POST wake"| API

What it owns

Agent rows (lifetime, run_type, assignment, generation, desired state, model, harness, tools, unique slug)
The skill catalog (name, category, versions, document_id). Bytes stay in documents
The tool catalog, what each harness can run, and each agent's grants. An empty grant list still keeps the harness's always-granted tools
The wake inbox, run history, and harness log lines (started, heartbeat, wake, error, skill, info, warn)
Starting and stopping the harness pinned on the agent (local process or cluster Deployment / Job)
Optional comms link stored as conversation_id
Its own audit log (GET /v1/audit): one sentence per agent or skill event, written from the outbox

What it does not own

LLM keys (broker). Comms keys (communications). Intelligence claims.

services/agents and frontend/agents-app were removed. Foundry is the path.

See ADR 0046.

Canonical service README: services/foundry/README.md.