Autonomy & Agents

Momental does not wait to be asked. Agents continuously scan your workspace for signals that need attention. Here is what runs and why.

The Proactive Loop

Most knowledge management tools are passive - they store what you put in and return it when you search. Momental is active. A wakeup loop runs regularly and triggers a cascade of automated intelligence work:

flowchart TD
  Wake["Agent wakeup"]
  Scan["Scan for signals"]
  CD["Conflict detection<br/>New atoms vs existing graph"]
  GD["Gap detection<br/>Missing derivation chains"]
  CT["Cross-tree conflict detection<br/>Atoms vs strategy nodes"]
  Brief["Generate proactive brief<br/>if signals found"]
  Chat["Post to agent room"]

  Wake --> Scan
  Scan --> CD
  Scan --> GD
  Scan --> CT
  CD --> Brief
  GD --> Brief
  CT --> Brief
  Brief --> Chat

When agents find something worth surfacing - a new conflict, a gap in reasoning, a strategy node that contradicts established knowledge - they post a brief to the team's agent room. You receive a notification. If nothing is found, nothing is posted.

Conflict Detection

Every time a new atom enters the graph, Momental automatically checks it against existing knowledge for contradictions. This runs immediately on ingestion - not on a schedule.

When a conflict is detected, it's flagged for your team to review. Some resolutions can be handled automatically by agents. Others - especially ones that would retire knowledge a human created - require your approval first. This prevents agents from quietly overwriting your team's decisions.

See Knowledge Graph for more on how conflict detection works.

Gap Detection

In parallel with conflict detection, Momental scans for gaps in your knowledge graph — places where reasoning should exist but doesn't. Examples: a decision without documented evidence behind it, topics with asymmetric coverage, or an atom that implies a policy violation. Gaps are surfaced in the agent room and assigned for investigation.

Cross-Tree Conflict Detection

The most strategically significant signals are cross-tree conflicts: places where your knowledge graph directly contradicts your strategy tree. These are not just inconsistencies - they represent misalignments between what you believe and what you're trying to do.

flowchart LR
  A["ATOM (Wisdom Tree)<br/>'We should deprecate the free tier in Q2'"]
  S["STRATEGY NODE<br/>KEY_RESULT: Grow freemium users by 50%"]
  C["CROSS-TREE CONFLICT<br/>ATOM_CONTRADICTS_STRATEGY"]

  A -.->|conflicts with| S
  A --> C
  S --> C

Cross-tree conflict detection runs on demand (via health) and as a scheduled weekly scan. Results appear in health.

Continuous Learning

The most powerful autonomous process in Momental is the one that happens during normal use. Every conversation with Huginn automatically captures insights from your team's work - decisions made, things learned, facts established.

flowchart LR
  C["Chat session"]
  E["Insights captured"]
  R["Human reviews + publishes"]
  B["Better context next session"]
  C --> E --> R --> B --> C

This means the workspace gets smarter with every conversation, not just every deliberate documentation effort. A team that uses Momental for daily work builds a rich knowledge graph without anyone sitting down to write documentation.

Captured insights appear in the conversation UI as a post-response panel. Review takes 30 seconds. Each published atom improves every future conversation that touches the same domain.

Agent Coordination

Momental's agents coordinate through the strategy tree's task system. No agent picks up work directly - every piece of autonomous work exists as a task in the tree, with an agent assigned to it and a human in the loop for final approval.

flowchart TD
  H["Huginn detects signal"]
  T["Task created in strategy tree"]
  A["Assigned to specialist agent"]
  W["Agent works: work_begin"]
  S["Agent submits: work_complete"]
  R["IN_REVIEW - human approves or sends back"]
  D["DONE"]

  H --> T --> A --> W --> S --> R --> D

What "Autonomous" Actually Means

Momental's autonomy is bounded. Agents can research, write drafts, create atoms, and flag issues without human intervention. What agents cannot do autonomously:

• Retire or replace an existing atom owned by a human
• Mark a task as DONE without submitting it for review first
• Send a direct message to a team member (only to the agent room)
• Make destructive changes to the strategy tree

This is a deliberate design choice. Autonomous agents that can silently modify authoritative knowledge erode trust. Momental's agents augment human judgment - they do the research and surface the signals; humans make the final call.