Definition
AFS
Agentic File System
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.
Our term
- Also called
- Agentic File System
- Read more
- AFS →
Explore this topic
Learning
- Start with AFS
Understand what a task can name, access and operate.
- What does AFS organize?
AFS gives a task a named, inspectable view of the resources it can work with.
- What does a path give an agent?
A path identifies a resource within a namespace, so operations can refer to it explicitly.
- How does a service enter AFS?
A provider implements resource operations; a mount places that provider in a namespace.
- Why do operation semantics matter?
Naming a resource is useful only when consumers can understand what operations on it mean.
- Does every path address the same kind of thing?
Compare scope, resolution and available operations.
Articles
- Recreate My ASE 2026 AFS-UI Demo with ChatGPT
Follow the prompts from my ASE demonstration to make a website, interactive examples and slides, and see why a working environment makes short instructions useful.
- What Endures When Everything Evolves?
From Lode Runner on an Apple II to Unix, X Window and the early internet, Robert Mao traces the experiences behind AFS-UI and a shared interface system for people and agents.
- Introducing AFS-UI: one interface for people and agents
AFS-UI lets people use a rendered interface while agents reach its corresponding structure through paths. An introduction to AFS, AUP, Web Device and the surrounding UI landscape.
- DarcFactory: The Dark Factory Era
At ASE 2026, ArcBlock introduces its DarcFactory vision: supervised autonomous software production built around work objects, independent verification, and human intent.
- When the interface changes, the work should remain
AI can generate a fresh interface at any moment. How do people and agents keep working on the same thing? A journey from OpenAI Intelligent UI and UI protocols to X Window and a working AFS-UI experiment.
- OCAP’s Three Generations: From Chain Access to AFS
How an idea inspired by ODBC developed into a GraphQL playground, became part of the Blocklet architecture, and now lives within ARC’s AFS resource model.
Products
- ARC active
The runtime for Blocklets. It gives a developer a place to run an application described as a Blocklet, together with the resources that Blocklet declares it needs.
Events
Documentation
- AIGNE Framework legacy
The functional, composable, and typescript-first AI Agent framework for real-world LLM Apps.
Terms
- AFS UI
AFS-UI builds interfaces over the addressable resources of AFS. People use a rendered interface; agents can inspect and operate its exposed structure through paths. AUP describes the interface and its interactions, while a UI device such as Web Device renders it.
- ARC
ARC is the runtime for Blocklets. It gives a developer a place to run an application described as a Blocklet, instead of making the runtime, the application, and its resource connections one unexplained deployment.
- AUP
AUP (Agentic UI Protocol) lets an application express what is shown and what actions are available. A runtime then renders the parts that fit its device capabilities, instead of treating one screen's pixels as the application itself.
- Context
Useful context is more than a prompt. It includes the documents, tools, and permitted actions that are relevant to the task. If those boundaries are vague, a capable model still has to guess what it may use.
- Small World
Every agent, app and process sees not the global world but a small world projected specifically for it. What is outside it is not "access denied", it does not exist.