Agent Architecture
TalkOps employs a hierarchical agent architecture built on supervisor coordination, state management, and DAG-based workflows.
Core Components
The Supervisor Agent
The central orchestrator and router of all incoming requests.
| Responsibility | Description |
|---|---|
| Request Analysis | Receives and analyzes natural language queries |
| Intent Recognition | Extracts intent, context, and required operations |
| Task Decomposition | Breaks complex requests into logical subtasks |
| Agent Routing | Routes tasks to specialized domain agents |
| State Management | Maintains conversation context and history |
| Result Aggregation | Synthesizes outputs into coherent responses |
Example Flow:
User: "Deploy our microservices to production with monitoring"
Supervisor:
1. Recognizes multi-domain request
2. Routes deployment → CI/CD Agent
3. Routes monitoring → Observability Agent
4. Tracks parallel operations
5. Aggregates and returns results
Specialized Agent Networks
Below the supervisor exists domain-specific agent networks:
☁️ Cloud Orchestration Agent
Handles cloud infrastructure provisioning and management.
- Cloud provider selection (AWS, Azure, GCP)
- Compute provisioning (VMs, containers, serverless)
- Network configuration (VPCs, security groups)
- Auto-scaling and load balancing
- IAM policies and cost optimization
Sub-Agents: AWS Specialist, Azure Specialist, GCP Specialist, Kubernetes Agent
🚀 CI/CD Agent
Manages build, test, and deployment pipelines.
- Build automation and containerization
- Automated testing (unit, integration, e2e)
- Security scanning and code quality
- Deployment strategies (rolling, blue-green, canary)
- Release management and versioning
Sub-Agents: Build Pipeline, Testing, Container Registry, Deployment Strategy
📊 Observability Agent
Establishes comprehensive monitoring.
- Metrics collection (Prometheus)
- Log aggregation (ELK, Loki)
- Distributed tracing (Jaeger, Zipkin)
- Dashboard creation (Grafana)
- Alert configuration
Sub-Agents: Metrics, Logging, Tracing, Dashboard, Alert Configuration
🛡️ SRE Agent
Proactive monitoring and automated remediation.
- Service health assessment
- Anomaly detection and alerting
- Automated incident response
- Error budget tracking (SLO/SLI)
- Chaos engineering
Sub-Agents: Health Monitor, Incident Detector, Remediation, SLO Tracker
State Management
The system maintains multiple state categories:
| State Type | Contents |
|---|---|
| Request | Current request ID, decomposed tasks, execution status |
| Conversation | Historical context, user preferences, workflow history |
| Approval | Pending checkpoints, approval history, RBAC |
| Infrastructure | Current vs desired state, drift detection |
| Error | Errors encountered, retry status, recovery options |
Storage Tiers:
- Short-term: Conversation memory (request lifecycle)
- Medium-term: Session state in secure stores
- Long-term: Git repos (GitOps) and audit databases
DAG Workflow Model
Workflows are represented as Directed Acyclic Graphs.
Node Types
| Node Type | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Agent Execution | Invokes specialized agents |
| Decision | Conditional routing logic |
| Tool Invocation | Direct tool calls (Terraform, Docker) |
| MCP Server | External service requests |
| Approval | Human review checkpoints |
| Aggregation | Merges parallel results |
Edge Types
- Sequential: B waits for A to complete
- Parallel: Independent tasks run concurrently
- Conditional: Path based on runtime conditions
Key Properties
- Acyclic: No circular dependencies
- Parallel Execution: Independent nodes run simultaneously
- Clear Dependencies: Every edge = explicit dependency
- State Propagation: Results flow along edges
Request Lifecycle
Error Handling
| Error Type | Handling |
|---|---|
| Validation | Early detection, return with suggested fixes |
| Execution | Retry with backoff, escalate if persistent |
| Approval | Pause workflow, notify user with guidance |
Recovery Mechanisms:
- ✅ Automatic retry with exponential backoff
- ✅ Fallback to secondary agents
- ✅ Resume from failure point (no re-execution)
- ✅ State checkpointing at critical points
- ✅ Human escalation with full diagnostics
Security Controls
| Layer | Controls |
|---|---|
| Supervisor | Request validation, rate limiting, audit logs |
| Agent Network | Permission checks, quota enforcement, policy compliance |
| Tool/MCP | Credential rotation, encryption, request signing |
| Approval | MFA, RBAC, segregation of duties, immutable audit |