Director vs Agent Platform

The Matrix Agent Platform is the cognitive runtime: system.agents (sessions, memory, embeddings), system.inference (provider routing), and the provider driver packages (@open-matrix/driver-openai, driver-anthropic, driver-ollama). Director is one of its consumers — not part of it.

Roles

Concern	Owner	Where
Session creation/lookup	`system.agents`	`@open-matrix/agents`
Conversation history (`session_state.read`)	`system.agents`	`@open-matrix/agents`
Memory search (`memory.search`)	`system.agents.memory` (canonical) or `system.memory` (legacy compat)	`@open-matrix/agents`
Embeddings	`system.agents.embeddings` (canonical) or `system.embeddings`	`@open-matrix/agents`
Provider routing & inference	`system.inference`	`@open-matrix/inference`
Provider credential reads	`system.factotum`	`@open-matrix/factotum`
Prompt UI (Chat tab)	Director	this package, via `@open-matrix/chat-component/surface`
Workstream projections	Director	this package

The exact mounts Director targets

src/services/DirectorServiceTargets.ts enumerates them, ordered canonical-first then compat-fallback:

export const DirectorServiceTargets = {
  observability: {
    logging: ['system.observability.logging', 'system.logging'],
    tracing: ['system.observability.tracing', 'system.tracing'],
    health:  ['system.observability.health',  'system.health'],
    metrics: ['system.observability.metrics', 'system.metrics'],
  },
  runtime: {
    scheduler: ['system.scheduler'],
    budget:    ['system.budget'],
  },
  cognition: {
    sessions:   ['system.agents'],
    memory:     ['system.agents.memory', 'system.memory'],
    embeddings: ['system.agents.embeddings', 'system.embeddings'],
  },
} as const;

DirectorDataAdapter calls invokeFirst(...) against each list and tags the result with backend: 'agents' | 'legacy' + backendMode: 'canonical' | 'compat' so the Sessions tab can show which backend served the request. This is the Phase-1 honest fallback; the legacy paths exist because some deployments still mount system.memory directly.

How a Director chat-tab prompt flows today

Trace from src/components/DirectorChatSurfaceHost.ts and @open-matrix/chat-component/surface/ConversationSurfaceActor.ts:

User clicks an actor in director-tree → director-detail activates <director-chat-surface-host>.
The host dynamically imports @open-matrix/chat-component/surface, registering <conversation-surface> and friends.
surface.set-target { mount } propagates to the surface.
User types in <conversation-input>; the surface calls RequestReply.execute(context, 'system.agents', '$prompt', payload) with callerRoot, callerMount, snapshotTree, and an activityTo array pointing back at itself.
system.agents opens (or resumes) a session, calls system.inference for tokens, and streams $activity frames back. The surface renders thinking/token/done frames.

Director's Sessions tab (src/components/tabs/TabSessions.ts) uses the same mounts via DirectorDataAdapter.promptSession, listSessions, loadSessionHistory, and loadSessionActivity.

What's not yet proven end to end

WORKSTREAMS/loose-ends/items/P1.11-cognitive-product-proof.md is open as of 2026-05-05. The code wiring exists — Director invokes system.agents, the surface streams ActivityFrames, sessions persist — but there is no E2E proof that runs the full chain (Director → system.agents → system.inference → mock provider → ActivityFrames → persisted session → Chat sees the same session). Treat the chat tab as wired but not E2E-proven in the current codebase.

What this means for the user

If you select an actor in Director and the Chat tab returns errors:

No effective inference provider configured. Verify system.inference status.get returns an effective.provider. Configure via the Inference Settings webapp or matrix invoke system.inference.
system.agents not reachable. Verify it appears under system.runtimes runtimes.registered and exposes $prompt in its $introspect.
Compat-only fallback. The Sessions tab badge will read legacy instead of canonical. That is a deployment configuration issue, not a Director bug — your Host is exposing system.memory instead of system.agents.memory.

Director vs Agent Platform ​

Roles ​

The exact mounts Director targets ​

How a Director chat-tab prompt flows today ​

What's not yet proven end to end ​

What this means for the user ​