Framework v0.3
The Agentic Standard Model
It was developed to replace ad hoc descriptions of agents with a shared reference model that researchers, architects, engineers, and students can use to reason about design from first principles.
What It Is
A reference standard for describing agentic systems in terms of elements, molecules, and force laws.
Why It Exists
To give the field a rigorous vocabulary for dependency, composition, and structural error instead of relying on vendor terminology.
Who It Is For
For anyone who has watched an agentic system fail in a way they could not fully explain, and suspected the problem was architectural rather than incidental. Researchers, architects, engineers, and practitioners who want a principled vocabulary for design decisions rather than a moving collection of vendor patterns.
Start Here
A Clear Reading Path
The framework is new and dense. This path gets a first-time reader from the problem statement to the full compositional model in the right order.
Primary Artifact
The Agentic Periodic Table
This is the fastest way to understand the framework. Periods encode dependency layers. Groups encode functional character. Gaps are predictions, not omissions.
Framework Boundaries
What The Model Covers
The framework moves in layers. It starts with elemental structure, rises into composition, and ends with the laws that govern interaction across system boundaries.
Physics Layer
Elements and Bosons
The 22 elements, the boson-class protocols, and the dependency logic that determines period placement.
Example: the table itself predicts structure by leaving gaps rather than hiding them.
Chemistry Layer
Molecules and Bonds
How elements compose into valid molecules, why some bonds are optional, and which couplings define identity.
Example: the ReAct molecule shows the minimum viable agent as a fully load-bearing structure.
Force Laws
Channels and Constraints
The three force channels that govern valid interaction, the conserved quantities they protect, and the forbidden patterns they exclude.
Example: invoking a sub-agent through Mc instead of A2 is a structural error, not a stylistic choice.
About the Framework
About the Framework
The Agentic Standard Model was developed by Andrew Hinton, a Principal Data Scientist and Agentic Systems Architect building enterprise agentic systems. It grew out of a recurring observation: that the field had accumulated a rich catalog of patterns but lacked a structural theory to explain why those patterns take the forms they do, why certain combinations fail, and what must exist that has not yet been built. The ASM is an attempt to build that theory from first principles, with the same generative discipline that made the periodic table useful before anyone understood why it had to have the structure it did.
Contribution Model
Contribute to the Framework
This is a living standard. The right contributions are not feature requests in the usual sense, but structural tests against the theory. The dedicated contribution page turns those challenges into a consistent submission path for peer review.
Stress-tests for patterns that appear to require missing elements.
Molecule submissions from real systems that validate or challenge known compositions.
Force-law violations that map production failures to forbidden structural interactions.