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What Castellan is / is not

Castellan is

  • A coordination runtime — pressure-field scheduler, typed blackboard, episode logs
  • A plugin harness boundary — CastellanPlugin::verify_goal drives the default castellan run loop
  • An in-tree multiplexer — HerdR-shaped NDJSON socket API + PTY panes
  • A topology evolution loop — castellan evolve mutates wake maps from episodes
  • Governance-aware — castellan.toml hooks, tool pipeline, drift-check manifest

Default castellan run uses deterministic plugins (gridworld, shell). The scheduler wakes agents from substrate signals — not a manager LLM.

Castellan is not

  • An OpenCode / Claude Code / claw-code clone — no drop-in coding agent with dozens of providers on the hot path
  • An OpenClaw wrapper — Castellan does not host or wrap external harness binaries; it is the coordination runtime
  • A meta-harness composition layer — unlike Omnigent-style wrappers, Castellan does not orchestrate Claude Code + Codex as black boxes
  • A workflow DSL — coordination is the pressure field, not hand-drawn graphs
  • A chat router — agent-to-agent NL handoffs are intentionally forbidden

Honest scope: claw-code and OpenClaw optimize single-agent coding loops. Castellan optimizes multi-agent coordination geometry — scheduler ticks, pheromone deposits, topology evolution, and multiplexer pane farms.

Comparison snapshot

NeedCastellanclaw-code / OpenClaw
Daily coding agentUse castellan acp or external editor + MCPPrimary product
Multi-pane agent farmIn-tree multiplexer + dashboardExternal tmux scripts
Topology evolutioncastellan evolve + archiveNot in scope
Stigmergy / pressure fieldCore schedulerNot in scope
Provider matrixOptional verify-path LLM onlyHot-path feature

Honest adoption path

NeedUse
Prove coordination thesiscastellan run, swarm-demo, Govcraft bench in verify.sh
Editor integrationcastellan acp (stdio + prompt → engine)
External tool bridgecastellan mcp or castellan run --mcp
Remote pane farmcastellan remote --plugin <name> with governance
Cursor / Claude daily driverPair Castellan multiplexer with agent hooks

Castellan deliberately does not chase OpenCode/Claude Code/claw-code feature parity — coordination runtime and honest scope are the product.