Architecture Overview
How HUMΛN Works Under the Hood
The HUMΛN Stack
HUMΛN is built as a five-layer protocol stack, where each layer builds on the one below it. Think of it like TCP/IP for Human-AI coordination.
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Layer 5: APPLICATION LAYER │
│ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │
│ Your Apps, Agents, Workflows │
│ (Built on top of HUMAN) │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
↕
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Layer 4: ORCHESTRATION LAYER │
│ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │
│ HumanOS: Route tasks, coordinate agents, human-in-loop │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
↕
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Layer 3: CAPABILITY LAYER │
│ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │
│ Capability Graph: Skills, permissions, routing │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
↕
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Layer 2: IDENTITY LAYER │
│ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │
│ Passport: Cryptographic identity, delegations │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
↕
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Layer 1: LEDGER LAYER │
│ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │
│ Provenance: Immutable audit trail, cryptographic proofs │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘The Five Layers
Layer 1: Ledger Layer (Provenance)
The foundation. Every action is logged with cryptographic proofs. Immutable audit trail, provenance chains, and full accountability.
Layer 2: Identity Layer (Passport)
Cryptographic identity for humans, organizations, and agents. Portable Passports, DIDs, key pairs, and delegation tokens.
Layer 3: Capability Layer (Capability Graph)
Skills and permissions. Agents declare capabilities, humans grant them, and HumanOS routes work based on skills.
Layer 4: Orchestration Layer (HumanOS)
The brain. Coordinates multi-agent workflows, enforces human-in-the-loop approvals, and tracks execution.
Layer 5: Application Layer (Your Apps)
Everything you build. Agents, workflows, UIs, integrations — all built on top of the HUMΛN protocol.
Design Principles
🔓 Open Protocol
HUMΛN is not a black box. It's an open protocol anyone can implement, extend, or integrate. No vendor lock-in.
🧩 Modular
Each layer is independent. Use just Passport for identity, or go all the way to HumanOS for full orchestration.
🔐 Security First
Cryptographic identity, signed delegations, immutable provenance. Every layer enforces zero-trust principles.
👤 Human-Centric
AI assists, humans decide. Human-in-the-loop is a first-class concept, not an afterthought.
📈 Scalable
From 1 agent to 10,000. From 1 workflow to millions. Built for enterprise scale from day one.
🔍 Observable
Full provenance, queryable audit trails, and rich telemetry. You can see exactly what's happening, always.
Example: Invoice Processing Flow
Here's how all 5 layers work together in a real workflow:
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ INVOICE PROCESSING: ALL 5 LAYERS IN ACTION │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ │ │ 1. IDENTITY (Layer 2) │ │ - Alice (CFO) has Passport: passport_alice_123 │ │ - Invoice Agent has Passport: passport_agent_inv │ │ - Alice delegates to agent with constraints │ │ │ │ 2. CAPABILITY (Layer 3) │ │ - Agent declares: invoice_processing, pdf_extraction │ │ - Alice grants these capabilities to the agent │ │ - HumanOS verifies agent has required capabilities │ │ │ │ 3. ORCHESTRATION (Layer 4) │ │ - Task: "Process 50 invoices from Acme Corp" │ │ - HumanOS routes to agent (verified capabilities) │ │ - Human-in-loop: Alice must approve before execution │ │ - Alice approves, agent executes │ │ │ │ 4. PROVENANCE (Layer 1) │ │ - Every step logged: │ │ * Alice delegated to agent at 14:30 │ │ * Agent started task at 14:35 │ │ * Alice approved at 14:40 │ │ * Agent completed at 14:55 │ │ - Full chain: Alice → Acme Corp → Agent → Action │ │ │ │ 5. APPLICATION (Layer 5) │ │ - Your app shows invoices processed │ │ - UI displays provenance chain │ │ - Exports audit report for compliance │ │ │ └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘