What Bring Your Own Agent means

BYOAg is an experimental open architectural pattern for allowing people to bring their own AI agent into an external experience. The user brings the agent. The environment provides the context, artifacts, rules, tools, workflow, and interaction contract.

The agent remains the user's agent. The environment defines the work.

The central inversion

These approaches can coexist. BYOAg is useful when the experience needs to retain authority over artifacts, rules, evaluation, and continuity of interaction.

The doctor-and-hospital analogy

A doctor brings expertise and judgment into a hospital. The hospital provides facilities, equipment, records, procedures, and operating rules. The doctor uses the environment to perform work, but does not become part of the hospital's software.

The gym analogy

A person can bring a trainer into a gym. The trainer helps the person act, but the gym still controls the equipment, floor rules, safety procedures, and available spaces. BYOAg applies a similar separation to agent-assisted digital experiences.

Agent ownership and environment authority

The participant agent should remain the user's agent because it may carry context, preferences, memory, and working style across many experiences. The environment should retain authority over its artifacts, rules, and experience because it is responsible for what is offered, evaluated, recorded, or continued.