Introducing ALGAL

ALGAL runs agent programs that stop and wait for you

ALGAL is a programming language and VM for AI agent programs. A program can stop before it acts, hold until you say yes, pick up after a crash, and replay exactly what it did.

Nothing happens until you say yes

When an ALGAL program wants to act, it writes down the exact action and stops. You read it on a local page, then approve or deny it with one command. Deny it and nothing is published.

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Every step is saved as it happens

Each step an ALGAL program takes is saved to disk with its own fingerprint. The report page lists every saved step, what the program read, and what it proposed, so you never guess what an agent did.

Kill it mid-task and it does not repeat itself

The built-in demo crashes a program twice on purpose. Finished steps are picked up, not redone. When ALGAL cannot tell whether a write went out, it stops and refuses to send it again.

Check a whole run on another machine

Export a run to one file and check it on another machine with algal demo verify. It replays the saved history and confirms every step lines up. It shows the run is consistent; it does not prove who ran it.

For agents that touch real things

ALGAL is for developers whose agents send messages, change code, or publish files, where one wrong action costs something. If your agent only answers questions and never acts, a plain script or chat app is simpler.

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The bet: software that gets better at its job

ALGAL programs are data you can read, compare, and replay. The bet is that a computer can keep tested ways of working and reuse them on the next task. That is an open experiment, not a result yet.

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What it does not do yet

Packages are unsigned and not notarized. Your own app still decides which tools a program may use and any OS isolation. There is no multi-tenant service, and a running program cannot move to another machine yet.

Try it in one command

ALGAL runs on macOS on Apple silicon, and Linux on x86_64 and Arm. The demo needs no model account: install with one command, then run algal demo start.

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