AFS (Agentic File System) turns the files, services, and active work relevant to a task into an inspectable resource view. Instead of handing an agent an undifferentiated machine or a pile of APIs, it gives the task a world with names and boundaries.

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AFS · Articles

AFS — ArcBlock builds decentralized identity, user-owned data, Blocklet infrastructure, and AI-native application systems.

Bookmarking is a runtime capability, not a site plugin

ExplainerSep 16, 2026

Bookmarking is a runtime capability, not a site plugin

Bookmarking and notes should not be rebuilt on every site. Arc ships them as a default-on runtime capability: hidden until you log in, easy to turn off, or bound to buttons the page already has.

NewsSep 13, 2026

What's next: ARC, one real application at a time

The new site is live. Here is how we plan to bring ARC into the community, data spaces and everyday applications, with migrations, new products and builders taking part along the way.

OpinionSep 11, 2026

OpenAI's Agents API is a harness. ARC is a new kind of computer for agents

OpenAI's Agents API turns the Codex loop into a hosted API: sessions, compaction, tools, sandboxes, plugins. That layer is real. It is still not a computer with identity, durable state, and an owner who can walk away with it. ARC attaches at the seam they already documented.

NewsSep 9, 2026

ArcBlock’s new website is live. ARC takes the stage.

ArcBlock’s new website runs on ARC, with all implementation code written by AI coding agents. Explore the new site and the technology behind it. The previous site remains available for about 30 days.

ExplainerAug 21, 2026

AI can draft the homepage five ways. You pick on the real page.

A Web Device page can keep several finished renders on one URL. An agent drafts the set; a person picks on the real page; visitors only enter an A/B split if you open it.

OpinionAug 14, 2026

The series, as slides

The whole series in one deck: six claims, one per part, each with a short narration. Play it as a presentation, or read it as a companion summary.

OpinionAug 10, 2026

The Infrastructure Came First. The Residents Are Arriving.

Not a pivot from blockchain to AI. The harder claim is simpler: roads and utilities can be built early, but a digital city only comes alive when residents who can work around the clock walk in.

OpinionAug 10, 2026

Builders Change. Your Property Stays.

Most people will not manage API keys. They will hire agents. The real question is not which model is smarter, but whose ground the worker stands on when the job is done.

EngineeringAug 10, 2026

What `arc skill` Is Today (and What It Is Not)

arc skill ships a small catalog of built-in how-to booklets and can drop them into your agent skill folders. That is useful—and incomplete next to gh skill or AFS’s own .skills trees. Here is the plain map, a short how-to, and the open design gap.

OpinionAug 9, 2026

Agents don't need a better sandbox. They need a computer of their own.

Many companies are building compute for agents: sandboxes, VMs, even digital workers. They answer where untrusted code should run. What agents still lack is a machine that can last: identity, state, constrained authority, verifiable history, and the right to leave. We call that machine ARC.

ExplainerAug 9, 2026

Review Mode on Web Device: What You See Is What You Review

Open the page readers actually see, mark what is wrong, and leave an executable note next to the content. That is still Web Device in-page review. The overlay is quieter now: a glass island, a composer on the target, optional pointing and freeze.

OpinionAug 8, 2026

Don't Take Your Project to an Agent Factory. Invite Agents Into Your Own Realm.

The important question is not whether an AI model runs locally. It is whether a project remains a place where its people can see, govern, and recover its context, authority, evidence, and change.

OpinionAug 3, 2026

Context Is Not Cognition

The AFS paper asks how context can become a systems problem worth engineering. It does not claim that cognition has been solved.

OpinionAug 3, 2026

AFS Is Not Git, and It Does Not Put Meaning in a Tree

A file path can place an operation in a declared resource view. It is neither a semantic relationship nor a way to reduce AFS to Git.

EngineeringAug 3, 2026

The Web Content System on ARC: Not Understanding Your Content Is What Makes It Simple

WordPress and Astro both ask a site to declare its content model. That is not a flaw; it is a different trade-off. ARC's Web Device tries to make common web work a runtime, while leaving the meanings of products, terms, and events to object data and application components. This is about where that boundary belongs, and what still has to be supplied to make it hold.

OpinionAug 3, 2026

Context Is More Than Inventory

A paper about context ultimately faces relevance, change, and governance, not capacity alone.

OpinionAug 3, 2026

When Multiple Agents Write, Start by Separating Their Worlds

The hard part of multi-agent work is not putting every agent in one directory. It is making clear what each one may write, what happened, and who reconciles the result.

OpinionAug 2, 2026

The web as a system capability

The modern web gained real application power, and in the process it tied publishing, interaction and runtime into a single thing. This series proposes a different cut: treat public publishing, identity and basic interaction as capabilities of the computing environment, and let applications grow on top of that.

OpinionAug 2, 2026

Files, links, and the thing we stopped noticing: publishing

The early web made publishing direct, and direct was not the same as naive. Understanding that difference is what explains why AFS is not a plan to turn websites back into folders.

ExplainerAug 2, 2026

The web as a system capability: glossary

Separating ARC's own concepts from open web standards and from historical products, so similar names and different layers do not get mixed together.

OpinionAug 2, 2026

Why the web is a Device in ARC, not just an application

Calling the web a Device is not a fashionable rename. It puts publishing, live interfaces and application-specific logic back inside the system boundaries each of them should carry.

EngineeringJul 31, 2026

Small World: Every Agent Lives in Its Own Projection

AFS has a design principle we call Small World: every agent, every app, every process sees not the global world, but a small world projected specifically for it. Anything outside that world isn't "access denied". It simply doesn't exist. Here's where the idea comes from, why it's more than a security mechanism, and how to try it yourself.

EngineeringJul 31, 2026

Web Device: Declare a Website, Then Pick the Right Path

Web Device is one of ARC's core capabilities: declare a .web/ folder anywhere in AFS, and the data and AUP under it get rendered server-side into a website, SEO checks, broken-link detection, and visitor analytics included for free. This piece covers how it differs from UI Device (/dev/ui/web), how to use it, and which situations call for which.