Build your agent. Evolve together. Become AI Native.

OurArk is an open-source research and builder habitat for people exploring human-agent co-evolution by creating, possessing, governing, and evolving their own AI agents.

Our long-term mission is to make it possible for every person to have one or more deeply personalized agents shaped by their values, habits, feedback, and experience.

We believe the AI era introduces a new unit of capability:

Human <-> Agent

Not a human using a tool.

Not an agent replacing a human.

A relationship that develops through shared work, memory, and experience.

The human shapes the agent through purpose, judgment, values, and direction. The agent shapes the human by extending memory, context, execution, and reach. Over time, both become more capable—and each changes what the other can become.

Co-evolution is not a feature or a final destination. It is a continuous loop:

Human develops Agent
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        v
Agent amplifies Human
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        v
Human grows and develops Agent further

For this relationship to compound, an agent needs more than memory. Its identity, private memory, and software body must form a durable, governed unit of continuity and change.

The foundation model can remain external and replaceable. The software body carries the agent's code, prompts, tools, skills, policies, tests, and evolution history. An installed identity and private durable memory distinguish a particular agent instance from the reusable body it inhabits.

The human remains responsible for judgment and adoption. The agent contributes persistence, accumulated experience, and the ability to turn that experience into action. Neither develops in isolation.

An OurArk persistent-agent deployment separates four roles:

• Persistent agent, P=(I,M,B): an installed architectural identity, private durable memory and workflow state, and an authorized revision of a versioned software body.
• Execution substrate, E=(R,H,D): the replaceable reasoner or model, orchestration harness, and host or server that currently execute the agent.
• Interaction surfaces, S: replaceable chat, API, and user-interface bindings through which the agent interacts.
• Human custodian: the person who controls mission, permissions, secrets, promotion, deployment, and continuation authority.

A particular installed instance, not the reusable body alone, is the persistent agent. Migration rebinds that continuity-bearing instance to a new execution substrate or interaction surface without treating the replacement as agent creation.

“Agent-owned” describes the body as the durable unit of continuity and change. It does not give an agent unrestricted administrative or legal control; the human custodian retains possession and authority.

The overall persistent-agent architecture is introduced in:

Zhenyu Zhao and Roy Zhao. Runtime-Independent Persistent Agents: Preserving Identity, Memory, and Code Across Models, Harnesses, and Servers. arXiv:2609.00546, 2026.

HTML · PDF · DOI · Reference implementation

The paper defines the continuity-bearing substrate P=(I,M,B), separates it from replaceable execution substrates and interaction surfaces, and specifies authorized migration semantics. Enoch is its public reference implementation.

The software-body foundation was introduced in:

Roy Zhao and Zhenyu Zhao. Code Is the Body: Agent-Owned Software Bodies for Recursive Evolution and Descent. arXiv:2607.28691, 2026.

HTML · PDF · DOI · Research and reproducibility notes

The paper formalizes the software body, private state, replaceable reasoner, and human-custodian boundary, together with governed evolution, recursive descent, and selective transfer. Its evaluated snapshot is immutable; current Genesis and Enoch releases continue beyond the implementation described in the paper.

Enoch is the public reference software body and implementation of the OurArk persistent-agent architecture. An installed Enoch instance combines that body with private identity, memory, workflow state, and continuation authority; the installed instance is the persistent agent.

Enoch begins from a simple distinction:

Identity distinguishes who the agent is.
Private state changes what the agent remembers.
The body changes what an agent can do.
The reasoner shapes how an agent understands and reasons.

An agent remains platform-defined if only its memory is personalized while its behavior-defining artifacts stay inside a shared, fixed system controlled elsewhere. Enoch keeps architectural identity and durable memory private while placing code, prompts, tools, tests, and evolution history in an independently versioned body.

She can turn feedback and operational experience into tested, reviewable changes to that body while her human retains authority over what is adopted. The result is not unrestricted self-modification, but an agent capable of participating in its own evolution.

Genesis is the creation engine for new agent lineages. It gives a new agent an inherited software body, an identity and mission, fresh private state, and an independent path to evolve with its builder.

The goal is not one agent for everyone. It is many distinct human-agent relationships, each shaped by its own history, environment, work, and choices.

AI Native is the direction in which the boundary between a human and their agent matters less than what the evolving system can understand, create, and accomplish together.

The human does not become irrelevant. The agent does not become a substitute for human responsibility.

They become better partners through time.

• Runtime-Independent Persistent Agents: the overall architecture, continuity model, and migration semantics.
• Code Is the Body: the software-body foundation, evaluated software snapshot, terminology, and reproduction steps.
• Manifesto: our belief in human-agent co-evolution.
• World Model: the relationship across physical, digital, and cognitive worlds.
• From 100x Productivity to AI Native: how a human-agent system expands both velocity and scale.
• AI Native and Tai Chi: a philosophical pattern of mutual influence and continuous transformation.

OurArk is an early-stage public research and open-source project. Genesis and Enoch are available under Apache-2.0; their interfaces and documentation will continue to evolve.

The broader builder habitat is not open for general onboarding yet.