---
title: "Conclave"
url: https://manvsmidi.com/projects/conclave/
category: tool
status: wip
date: 2026-02-25
tags: [rust, language, agents, ai, graphs]
related: [bramble, society, collusion-wiki, evonet, claudegoblikon, make-no-mistakes]
---

# Conclave

> An intent-first workflow language for AI agents. Programs lower to a canonical plan graph, get sealed against content-addressed capabilities, and run on a deterministic scheduler with a reproducible trace. Rust.

Tool · In progress · 2026-02-25

- [Source](https://github.com/sadovsky/conclave)

Conclave started as a question: what would a programming language for AI agents look like? Not machine code, and not another general-purpose language to rewrite everything in. Something closer to plans and constraints, structured as a graph that several agents can contribute to, review and argue over, and that becomes fully deterministic once everyone agrees.

## The pipeline

```
.conclave source → lower → Plan IR (canonical JSON)
                 → seal  → manifest pinning every capability by sha256
                 → pack  → self-contained artifact.cnclv
                 → run   → trace.json, same bytes every time
```

Every stage hashes its output. Change a rate limit, an import or a capability binary and the hash chain breaks.

A program declares **capabilities** (external calls, run as subprocesses over a one-line JSON stdio protocol, written in any language), **intrinsics** (pure built-ins) and **goals** with a `want` block and a `constraints` block:

```text
goal SummarizeUrls(urls: List<Url>) -> Json {
  want {
    map urls as url {
      let html = fetch(url);
      emit summarize(extract_text(html));
    }
    return assemble_json(collected);
  }
  constraints {
    determinism.mode == "sealed_replay";
    rate_limit(fetch) <= 2 req/s;
  }
}
```

`map`, `reduce`, `if/else` and imported goals each lower to a named subgraph, and every node carries the `subgraph_id` it came from, so a trace says which map iteration, branch or imported module produced which output. Goals can be published to a local module cache and imported by hash.

## What keeps it deterministic

- `BTreeMap` everywhere, never `HashMap`
- A virtual clock in the scheduler, no wall time
- Seeds are explicit inputs
- Ed25519 verification at seal time

v0.2 is done, including "Conclave in Conclave": a sealed capability that lowers other `.conclave` files. The repo has a `blog/` folder with the reasoning behind it, starting with a human-written preamble.

## Running it

```bash
cargo build --release
cargo test --workspace
```

`docs/hello_world.md` walks through lower, seal, pack and run end to end.

## Connected projects

- [Bramble](https://manvsmidi.com/projects/bramble/index.md): linked
- [Society](https://manvsmidi.com/projects/society/index.md): linked
- [collusion-wiki](https://manvsmidi.com/projects/collusion-wiki/index.md): shared tags: agents, graphs
- [EvoNet](https://manvsmidi.com/projects/evonet/index.md): shared tags: graphs
- [Claudegoblikon](https://manvsmidi.com/projects/claudegoblikon/index.md): shared tags: agents
- [make-no-mistakes](https://manvsmidi.com/projects/make-no-mistakes/index.md): shared tags: agents