# Formation

> Agents that participate in shared conversations, remember context, and follow through on work.

- [What is Formation?](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/introduction.md): Agents that participate in shared conversations, remember context, and follow through on work.
- [Get started](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/quickstart.md): Create your first agent, connect a conversation, and inspect its first reply.
- [Design principles](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/philosophy.md): Why Formation keeps identity, context, capabilities, and execution explicit.
- [Agent perspectives](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/perspective.md): How each agent keeps its identities, conversations, and knowledge separate.
- [Actor profiles](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/actor-profiles.md): Help an agent address and remember the people it works with.
- [Link accounts across platforms](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/identity-linking.md): Verify that two accounts belong to the same person within an agent’s perspective.
- [Memory and recall](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/memory-retrieval.md): How agents store reusable information and retrieve relevant, authorized context.
- [Memory privacy](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/memory-privacy.md): How source audiences, explicit sharing, and revocation govern reuse.
- [Conversation search](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/conversation-search.md): Retrieve past messages without losing their authorship or audience restrictions.
- [Dreaming](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/dreaming.md): Configure background learning, review proposed changes, and undo applied revisions.
- [Commitments](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/commitments.md): Track durable work, verify outcomes, and manage blocked or unfinished tasks.
- [Schedules](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/schedules.md): Set up reminders and recurring read-only work with durable occurrence history.
- [Steer active work](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/live-steering.md): Send corrections or stop requests while an agent is working.
- [Continue a paused task](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/task-continuation.md): Resume bounded work while preserving its context and permissions.
- [Automatic model selection](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/adaptive-model-routing.md): Choose answer models per turn using provider catalogs and bounded complexity decisions.
- [Decision models](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/decision-models.md): Configure the separate model role used for supported bounded classifications.
- [Tools and capabilities](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/tools.md): Give an agent the integrations, web access, and execution tools its work needs.
- [Add and manage tools](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/capability-setup.md): Connect an agent's accounts, manage its tools, and customize built-in access.
- [Tool discovery](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/tool-discovery.md): Manage an optional MCP server directory while keeping setup available offline.
- [Manage connections](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/connection-management.md): Reuse and bind named provider connections without mixing agent identities.
- [Remote MCP](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/remote-mcp.md): Connect remote MCP servers and govern their tools, authentication, and evidence.
- [REST API connections](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/rest-api-connections.md): Connect an agent to an authenticated HTTP API without an MCP server.
- [Web search, reading, and browsing](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/web-capabilities.md): Configure web providers and understand what each web capability can do.
- [Read documents](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/document-reading.md): Read supported attachments and understand document extraction limits.
- [Agent Vault](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/agent-vault.md): Store agent-owned credentials and use them by name in a browser or workspace.
- [Skills](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/skills.md): Let an agent or a human define, version, and use named playbooks over trusted primitives, resolved into the same offered set as configured tools.
- [Installation](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/operations/installation.md): Run the Formation service and prepare a new installation for agent setup.
- [Create and manage agents](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/agent-provisioning.md): Configure an agent’s identity, models, tools, and conversation connections.
- [OpenAI and self-hosted models](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/operations/openai-and-local-models.md): Connect Formation to OpenAI or an operator-hosted compatible inference endpoint.
- [External authentication](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/external-authentication.md): Delegate operator sign-in while preserving explicit identity and access boundaries.
- [Slack](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/connectors/slack.md): Set up Slack messaging and understand threading, addressing, and delivery.
- [Automatic Slack setup](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/slack-automatic-setup.md): Create and install an agent’s Slack app through Formation.
- [Telegram](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/connectors/telegram.md): Connect a Telegram bot and verify incoming and outgoing messages.
- [Phone messaging](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/connectors/phone.md): Connect a supported messaging provider and phone number.
- [Health checks and the boot contract](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/operations/health-and-boot.md): Liveness vs readiness, what each endpoint promises, and the boot ordering a deploy relies on.
- [Inspect agent activity](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/observability.md): Use conversation traces and run records to understand replies, silence, tools, and failures.
- [Operator API](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/operator-api.md): Administer agents and installation settings through authenticated API endpoints.
- [Secrets and recovery](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/secrets-and-recovery.md): Back up encrypted state, retain keys, rehearse recovery, and rotate credentials.
- [Upgrades and rollback](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/hosted-rollback.md): Check release compatibility and understand the limits of application rollback.
- [Telemetry](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/telemetry.md): Export traces and logs using the supported OpenTelemetry configuration.
- [Error tracking](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/error-tracking.md): Configure failure reporting and understand what is captured or scrubbed.
- [Sentry alert routing](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/operations/sentry-alert-routing.md): Route new and regressed runtime errors to Slack, and triage them on a beta SLA.
- [Sandboxed execution](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/sandboxed-execution.md): Configure isolated execution providers and manage workspace lifecycle.
- [Execution broker protocol](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/execution-broker-protocol.md): The open HTTPS protocol between Formation's broker execution backend and any remote execution broker.
- [Workspace snapshots](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/snapshot-lineage.md): Understand workspace recovery, snapshot ownership, and provider constraints.
- [Workspace credentials](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/workspace-credentials.md): Deliver approved service credentials to agent workspaces.
- [Memory backends](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/memory-backends.md): Configure retrieval providers, embeddings, indexes, and rebuilds.
- [Runtime architecture](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/layers.md): See how connectors, context, execution, and durable state fit together.
- [Data model](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/data-model.md): Understand the implemented conversation, agent, and execution entities.
- [Persistence](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/persistence.md): How Formation records conversation and runtime state in PostgreSQL.
- [Versioned state](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/versioned-state.md): Understand revisions, active settings, and which records retain history.
- [Access control](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/access-control.md): Distinguish operator permissions, agent isolation, and conversational audience checks.
- [Content protection design](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/content-protection.md): Inventory of stored customer content, threat models, and the proposed encryption, key custody, and retrieval design for hosted Formation (backlog L03).
- [Turn pipeline](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/turn-pipeline.md): Follow a message from authenticated intake to a checked outbound reply.
- [Agent harness](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/agent-harness.md): Understand the bounded execution loop, budgets, tools, and recovery boundaries.
- [Addressing and engagement](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/addressing.md): How Formation decides whether an agent should answer a message.
- [Context resolution](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/context-resolution.md): Assemble one agent’s authorized persona, history, memory, and tools.
- [Prompt budgets](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/prompt-budget.md): Bound model input without losing attribution or relaxing source permissions.
- [Model providers](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/connectors/model.md): Understand model roles, provider adapters, tool calls, and request limits.
- [Generic connector reference](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/connectors/generic.md): Understand the existing ingress implementation and unfinished provisioning and delivery paths.
- [Durable intake](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/durable-intake.md): Understand accepted-message guarantees, queue behavior, and worker recovery.
- [Turn checkpoints](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/turn-checkpoints.md): Resume interrupted runs from durable boundaries without blindly repeating effects.
- [Launch checks](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/launch-checks.md)
- [Retries and delivery failures](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/egress-reliability.md): Understand model retries, fallback selection, and connector delivery outcomes.
- [Run scratch storage](https://docs.formation.texturehq.com/runtime/scratch-store.md): Keep large tool results and temporary working data in bounded run-scoped storage.


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