Seven Planes
Seven Planes
Section titled “Seven Planes”AgentCTX organizes all agent interactions into seven planes. Each plane is a distinct domain with its own storage, query semantics, and access patterns.
Primary Planes
Section titled “Primary Planes”Tools (t)
Section titled “Tools (t)”The tools plane provides MCP (Model Context Protocol) tool discovery, inspection, and execution.
| Operation | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Discover | ?t github | Fuzzy search for matching tools |
| Inspect | !t github.issues.create | Get the full schema for a tool |
| Call | >t github.issues.create title="Fix SSE" | Execute a tool with arguments |
| Register | +t custom-tool endpoint="..." | Register a custom tool |
Key features:
- Lazy spawning — backends start on first query, not at boot
- Role-scoped — agents only see tools matching their configured roles
- Namespaced — tools are prefixed with backend ID (
github.issues.create) - Schema compression — tool schemas are compressed from ~67 tokens to ~25 for calls
Knowledge (k)
Section titled “Knowledge (k)”The knowledge plane provides full-text search with fuzzy matching across ingested documents and data.
| Operation | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Search | ?k "auth patterns" #code @7d ^3 | Full-text search with filters |
| Ingest | +k source="docs/" | Add documents to the knowledge base |
| Lookup | !k doc-abc123 | Exact lookup by document ID |
| Update | ~k doc-abc123 "revised content" | Update document content |
Key features:
- Chunking — documents are split into semantically meaningful chunks
- Write gate — validates and deduplicates before storage
- Filesystem watcher — automatically re-indexes when source files change
- Dual-path — MiniSearch (full-text) by default, SurrealDB HNSW vectors via
surrealqlNative=true
Memory (m)
Section titled “Memory (m)”The memory plane provides persistent, cross-session storage with a 5-layer architecture.
| Layer | Tag | Scope | Persistence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ephemeral | #ephemeral | Single session | Auto-expires |
| Individual | #my | Per-agent | Cross-session |
| Team | #team | Shared team | Cross-session |
| Organization | #org | Org-wide | Permanent |
| Global | #global | Platform-wide | Permanent |
Key features:
- Decay scoring — memories lose relevance over time unless reinforced
- Consensus — multi-agent agreement on shared facts
- Spatial recall — graph-based relationship traversal
- Archive tier — cold storage for rarely accessed memories
- Kind classification —
#fact,#lesson,#preference,#spatial,#temporal,#social,#relation,#handoff
Decorators for advanced operations:
?m @similar "auth-decision" #k:5 Vector similarity search?m @traverse auth-decision #depth:3 Graph traversal+m @relate A->informs->B Create graph relationships?m @changes #since:2026-03-01 Track changes over time+m @promote lesson #layer:team Promote to higher layerSkills (s)
Section titled “Skills (s)”The skills plane manages reusable agent workflows and capabilities.
| Operation | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Search | ?s "process assets" ^3 | Find relevant skills |
| Inspect | !s deploy-pipeline | Get skill details |
| Execute | >s deploy-pipeline env="staging" | Run a skill workflow |
| Register | +s new-skill "Steps: ..." | Register a new skill |
Key features:
- File-based — skills are
.mdfiles loaded from configured directories - Registry — skills are indexed and searchable by name and content
- Composable — skills can reference other skills
System Planes
Section titled “System Planes”Agents (a)
Section titled “Agents (a)”Multi-agent coordination — discovery, delegation, and federation.
?a "code reviewer" Discover agents^a code-review agent="opus" Delegate work-a agent-123 UnregisterInspection (i)
Section titled “Inspection (i)”Runtime introspection of the CTX system itself.
?i grammar Get the full operator × plane matrix and syntax rulesLLM (l)
Section titled “LLM (l)”Direct language model inference and embedding.
>l "summarize" model="claude-sonnet" Inference>l:embed "text" model="text-embedding-3" EmbeddingPlane Routing
Section titled “Plane Routing”The gateway routes each CTX statement to the correct plane handler based on the operator-plane pair:
?k → Knowledge.search()>t → Tools.call()+m → Memory.store()?s → Skills.search()^a → Agents.delegate()?i → Inspection.query()>l → LLM.infer()Invalid combinations (like >k — you can’t “call” knowledge) are rejected at parse time with error code INVALID_OP_PLANE.
- Sidecar → — the trust boundary between agents and humans
- Storage Model → — content-addressed storage and SurrealDB