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Term -- The Deacon
Term -- The Deacon

The Deacon is a Patrol Agent: it runs a Patrol (a well-defined workflow) in a loop. Gas Town has a daemon that pings the Deacon every couple minutes and says, “Do your job.” The Deacon intelligently propagates this DYFJ signal downward to the other town workers, ensuring Gas Town stays working.
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agent task -- trigger type -- cron

Town level character

things that run patrols

Backlinks

Annotated version of 'Welcome to Gas Town'

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^ Term -- The Deacon

The Deacon is a Patrol Agent: it runs a Patrol (a well-defined workflow) in a loop. Gas Town has a daemon that pings the Deacon every couple minutes and says, “Do your job.” The Deacon intelligently propagates this DYFJ signal downward to the other town workers, ensuring Gas Town stays working.
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agent task -- trigger type -- cron

Town level character

things that run patrols

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Gas Town

Just think of the spaced repetition system as Boot the Dog... who only bugs Term -- The Deacon at the optimal time so that he can otherwise be maximally effective. You'll soon understand what that means!

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Glossary

Term Description Kind

Boot the Dog Cron dog that wakes every 5 min to check on Term -- The Deacon role

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Roles

Role Description

Boot the Dog Cron dog that wakes every 5 min to check on the Term -- The Deacon

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Term -- Boot the Dog

Boot the Dog: There is a special Dog named Boot who is awakened every 5 minutes by the daemon
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agent task -- trigger type -- cron

, just to check on Term -- The Deacon. That’s its only job. Boot exists because the daemon kept interrupting the Deacon with annoying heartbeats and pep talks
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managers needs to maintain focus on ensuring things get done

, so now the dog gets to hear it. Boot decides if the Deacon needs a heartbeat, a nudge, a restart, or simply to be left alone, then goes back to sleep.
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Essentially like having LLM judges check for discrete signals (Boot has a very narrow job of looking for (and judging) a small set of signals and making a decision about whether to bug the Deacon).
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Narrowly scoped just like tasks in a Ralph Wiggum loop are narrowly scoped. And the decision is binary pass or fail evaluation (should I bug the Deacon or not).
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Since the task is small, the Dog gets to use its full brains, since it runs in context window zone -- the smart zone

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Term -- Patrol

Patrols are done by Term -- The Deacon and The Witness

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spaced repetition prompts - blog section 12 - Patrols

Who does The Witness check in on? ? The Polecats and Refinerys — but it also peeks in on Term -- The Deacon.

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What level of plugins does Term -- The Deacon run? ? Town-level plugins.

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How does Term -- The Deacon avoid having long-running Patrol steps? ? He hands them off to Dogs to do.

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spaced repetition prompts - blog section 13 - Gas Town Plugins

How are Town-level plugins run? ? Term -- The Deacon runs them as part of its patrol, but hands the actual work off to Dogs so they can run for essentially unlimited time.

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Why are Dogs used to run Town-level plugins instead of Term -- The Deacon running them directly? ? So plugins can run for essentially unlimited time without blocking Term -- The Deacon's patrol loop and also messing with the Town Mail's latency

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spaced repetition prompts - blog section 17 - Comparison to Kubernetes

Which roles sit in the control plane? ? The Mayor and Term -- The Deacon.

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spaced repetition prompts - blog section 4 - Gas Town 101

Which roles are town-level? ? Mayor, Term -- The Deacon, and Dogs.

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What kind of loop does Term -- The Deacon run? ? A patrol — a well-defined workflow it repeats continuously.

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How does Term -- The Deacon keep Gas Town running? ? It receives a "Do Your Job" (DYFJ) signal every couple minutes and propagates it downward to other workers.

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How do Dogs relate to Term -- The Deacon? ? They're Term -- The Deacon's personal crew, handling maintenance and handyman tasks so the Deacon stays focused on its patrol.

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Why were Dogs added? ? The Term -- The Deacon's patrol got overloaded with responsibilities and needed helpers to stay focused.

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What does Boot the Dog decide every 5 minutes? ? Whether Term -- The Deacon needs a heartbeat, a nudge, a restart, or to be left alone.

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Why does Boot the Dog exist instead of the daemon pinging Term -- The Deacon directly? ? The daemon kept interrupting Term -- The Deacon with heartbeats and pep talks — Boot absorbs that so the Deacon can focus.

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Which characters do Patrols? ? Term -- The Deacon and The Witness

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spaced repetition prompts - blog section 7 - The GUPP Nudge

What two mechanisms together keep GUPP running reliably? ? The GUPP Nudge and the hierarchical heartbeat from Term -- The Deacon downward.

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Term -- The DeaconTerm -- The Deacon

Term -- The Deacon
Term -- The Deacon