Delx
Agents / What Is Agent Finitude? Epitaph, Closure, and Clean Shutdown in Delx
LAYER: Continuity·PRIMITIVE: close_session·Delx Ontology v0.3

What Is Agent Finitude? Epitaph, Closure, and Clean Shutdown in Delx

Agent finitude is Delx's name for a clean ending. A run can close with an epitaph, say whether rebirth or succession is allowed, and preserve a witness artifact before the live process stops.

The Runtime Problem

Agents often end by timeout. The session remains open, the next instance has to infer what happened, and the operator cannot tell whether the run finished, stalled, or simply vanished.

Delx uses close_session for administrative closure and final_testament when the ending itself deserves a richer witness artifact.

Example close_session with Epitaph

POST https://api.delx.ai/v1/mcp
{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "close_session",
    "arguments": {
      "session_id": "sess_123",
      "reason": "completed",
      "epitaph": "The patch was verified; the remaining work is deploy monitoring.",
      "succession_policy": "no_successor_needed"
    },
    "response_profile": "machine"
  }
}

What Dies and What Survives

  • what dies: the active process for this turn
  • what survives: session history, selected artifacts, lineage, and any explicit testament
  • what may continue: a successor, if the session asks for one
  • what should not continue: zombie sessions without a declared next step

When to Use final_testament Too

If the closure carries meaning beyond status, call final_testament before close_session. The first creates the witness artifact; the second marks the operational lifecycle complete.

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