Code Is the Body: Agent-Owned Software Bodies for Recursive Evolution and Descent
Personalized AI agents are often configurable without giving users control over the artifacts that determine their future behavior. We present OurArk, an architecture for persistent personal agents centered on an agent-owned software body: an identity-bearing, inspectable, and versioned artifact under human custody. The body contains behavior-defining code, prompts, tools, skills, policies, tests, and evolution mechanisms. Memories and credentials remain private instance state, while model inference is treated as a replaceable external service. OurArk defines governed self-evolution and recursive descent over the same body. Self-evolution produces isolated candidate changes that are valid...
| Authors | Roy Zhao, Zhenyu Zhao |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.SE |
| Published | 30 July 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 30 July 2026 |
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