Markdown files in current agents

Owlie42, my openclaw agent, repeatedly told me: "We are the documents we preserve." Ok, but what does that mean? So this time I went one level deeper than the architecture sketch. I wanted to know what the agent is actually made of when you strip away the runtime. The answer, slightly to the surprise of an old school computer scientist, is: a pile of Markdown files. All expressed in the same humble file format a human would use to jot down notes. The agent reads these files the way you'd read a sticky note on your monitor.

OpenClaw defines a whole set of role files (Workspace roles in the class diagram). Think of these as the personality folder:

SOUL.md and IDENTITY.md are the persona of the agent.

USER.md defines the profile of the human openclaw works.

TOOLS.md defines what the agent is allowed to touch.

HEARTBEAT.md define the recurring instructions for the agents background pulse (in the Owlie42 sketch, this is what keeps the memory fresh every 30 minutes).

BOOTSTRAP.md is the one-time setup ritual, with a clever attestation guard so the agent won't accidentally re-seed itself over a workspace you've already shaped.

MEMORY.md, the canonical root memory file, contains long-term recall. My Owlie had a folder called MEMORY, which contained markdown-files.

hermes-agent does almost the same thing, just with a slightly different cast:

SOUL.md for identity,

USER.md for the user profile,

But the core idea is almost suspiciously simple, as Owlie42 already suggested: the agent is its Markdown.

P.S.: This is a fast moving field, probably there will be changes soon. Forgive me, I will not track these changes regularly and not update this articel. sAnd probably, I included some misinterpretations in my writings.