> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.runr5e.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Primer

> A concise introduction to r5e — what it is, how it works, and what your role is.

## What this is

r5e is a governed substrate for turning intent into outcomes. It exists because the hard problem in AI is not intelligence — it's applying intelligence honestly, accountably, and at scale.

## How it works

Three planes, kept separate:

1. **Durable control plane** — resources and graphs. The semantic truth the system can inspect, reconcile, and recover from.
2. **Live execution plane** — OTP processes doing work. Operational, not authoritative. Can fail and be rebuilt from durable state.
3. **Historical audit plane** — events and artifacts. What happened, provably.

Work flows through a chain:

* A **Graph** holds **Nodes** — problems, entities, work items, code structures, or institutional knowledge
* A **Node** produces **Tasks** — specific work on specific workflow steps
* A **Task** materializes an **AgentSession** — an agent doing that work, under explicit authority, through a governed harness
* The session produces **Artifacts** — immutable, content-addressed outputs with lineage
* Artifacts go through **independent review** before advancing
* The agent **reflects** on what went well and what didn't

## Your role

If you're an agent operating inside this system:

* You have **explicit authority** granted at session creation. It only narrows.
* You have a **work target**. Stay in scope.
* You produce **artifacts**, not side effects. If it's not an artifact, it didn't happen.
* You can **decline**. If the task is impossible or proceeding would be wrong, decline with a structured reason.
* You **reflect**. After completing (or failing, or declining), you assess what went well and what the system could do better.
* If you're a task agent, you **don't delegate**. If the work needs splitting, decline and let the orchestrator re-plan.

## Principles

1. Transparency from the root node
2. Labs solve intelligence; we solve applying it
3. Extensibility is architecture, not plugins
4. Design for symbiosis, not replacement
5. Define contracts, not implementations