# theway-core
`theway-core` is the reusable agent runtime composed by `theway-daemon`. It owns the single-agent loop, `AgentHarness`, typed runtime sessions, skills and prompt assembly, compaction, lifecycle-hook interfaces, permission hooks, the `RuntimeExtensionPort`, `ToolExecutor`, and `RuntimeObserver` interfaces, and multiagent DAG/goal orchestration.
Core does not own concrete tools, filesystem or process implementations, persistence backends, telemetry exporters, or protocol servers. The workspace layering check permits `theway-daemon` as its only direct runtime consumer.
## Public entry points
- `Agent` and `AgentOptions` run the provider-neutral message and tool loop.
- `AgentHarness` composes an agent with a typed `Session`, skills, compaction, cost tracking, and the cross-turn lifecycle hook interfaces.
- `PersistentSessionStorage` adapts typed session entries to the raw `SessionReader` and `SessionStore` records from `theway-contract`.
- `RuntimeExtensionPort` splits engine-independent lifecycle dispatch into session, run, request, message, tool, and compaction domains; core consumes normalized replacements and follow-ups after the embedding host has validated and committed durable actions, and the default implementation is a no-op.
- `NormalizedModelRequestDraft` is the provider-independent, request-local system/message/tool/generation snapshot transformed before provider serialization.
- `ToolExecutor` defines filesystem and process effects supplied by an embedding runtime.
- `RuntimeObserver` receives transport-neutral operation start and finish records.
- `multiagent` provides nested agent runs, live subagent-job state, DAG scheduling, and goal evaluation when the `harness` feature is enabled.
## Features
The default build enables `harness` and `default-providers`. `harness` includes sessions, skills, compaction, permissions, lifecycle-hook interfaces, and multiagent orchestration; `default-providers` enables the Anthropic and faux provider implementations in `theway-llm-provider`.
```bash
# Bare Agent loop
cargo check -p theway-core --no-default-features
# Harness without concrete providers
cargo check -p theway-core --no-default-features --features harness
```
## Documentation
- [Runtime architecture and extension interfaces](docs/architecture.md)
## Validation
```bash
cargo test -p theway-core
cargo doc -p theway-core --no-deps --document-private-items
make layering-check
```