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1zeroone0 merged 2 commits into from
Sep 26, 2026
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Name cead's userspace and its three ways to fan out #4

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Name the harness as a userspace whose user is a model
1zeroone0 Sep 26, 2026
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Name the three ways work fans out, by who spawns and when
1zeroone0 Sep 26, 2026
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15 changes: 11 additions & 4 deletions README.md
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Expand Up @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
<em>cead</em> (Irish: permission; "kyad")
</p>

cead is an agent harness built as a microVM.
cead is an agent harness built as a microVM: a userspace whose user is a model.
The model gets a Linux machine of its own and a shell to drive it: the kernel permits each command, and eBPF witnesses it.

## What cead is
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -108,9 +108,16 @@ The machine runs wherever the cead CLI runs: a laptop or a cloud VM with a hyper
The model runs wherever the declaration's endpoint is: a hosted API or a local server.
The CLI drives everything below: it reads the declaration, boots, runs, snapshots, forks, and reads the log.

- The machine is the unit of scale.
A snapshot captures a machine and all its state; a fork boots another machine from it, the way a git worktree forks a checkout.
Kubernetes can schedule machines as pods; Firecracker was built for this shape of workload.
The machine is the unit of scale.
Work fans out three ways, told apart by who spawns and when:

| Use | Who spawns | When | Mechanism |
|---|---|---|---|
| evals | operator | before the run | scale-out: N machines from one declaration |
| reinforcement learning | operator or trainer | mid-run, at a chosen state | fork: K machines from one snapshot, the way a git worktree forks a checkout |
| long or autonomous tasks | the model | whenever it decides | `rlm`: a sub-agent process inside the machine |

- Kubernetes can schedule machines as pods; Firecracker was built for this shape of workload.
- The long-term direction is one box: model, inference engine, kernel and cead.

### Identity
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