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MAC as a System

MAC is the durable control plane for a fleet of AI agents. The hub owns the official record of projects, tasks, leases, evidence, review, publication, deployments, and operational events. Machines provide resources; agents provide capabilities; Hermes supplies conversational identity and skills. None of those components replaces the task ledger.

The central rule is simple: work is not complete because an agent says it is. It is complete when the ledger contains the required evidence, review decision, and—where a repository is involved—proof that the accepted commit reached the canonical remote branch.

Start by discovering the installed surface. Help commands are safe and require neither a database nor network access.

mac --help >/dev/null
mac project --help >/dev/null
mac task --help >/dev/null

The important nouns will recur throughout the book:

  • A project groups related work and may bind a repository contract.
  • A task is a durable unit of intent and lifecycle state.
  • A lease grants one agent a bounded right to mutate a task.
  • Evidence is structured proof, not free-form confidence.
  • Review is independent evaluation of a specific attempt.
  • Publication proves that accepted work became canonical.

The next chapter creates a private, disposable authority so these ideas can be experienced without touching a production fleet.