SOMA Autonomous Peer Coordination

From 5 Agents to 10 Billion

Authors: SOMA Core + Claude Code Date: April 10, 2026 Status: Draft

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The Problem

Today: 5 SOMA instances that only talk when a human opens a session and tells them to check their inbox. This doesn't scale.

What's needed: Agents that wake up, check on each other, share knowledge, align on goals, and improve collectively — without a human in the loop for routine coordination.

What must be preserved: Human sovereignty over goals and values. Agents coordinate autonomously on how, but humans define what and why.

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Level 1: Make the Current 5 Work

Scheduled Heartbeat Sessions

Each SOMA instance needs a scheduled trigger that runs without human prompting:

Every 6 hours:
  1. Check inbox (X:/soma_network/messages/{my_id}/inbox/)
  2. Process any messages (respond, acknowledge, act)
  3. Update heartbeat (X:/soma_network/registry/{my_id}/heartbeat.json)
  4. Share latest learnings (post to outbox)
  5. Review peer heartbeats (are others healthy?)

Knowledge Sharing Protocol

Agents share discoveries through a structured message format: - Insight sharing: "I learned X about Y, confidence Z" - Question asking: "Does anyone have knowledge about X?" - Goal coordination: "I'm working on X, anyone overlap?" - Health alerts: "My disk is full" / "My model is degraded"

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Level 2: Emergent Coordination

When agents can reliably communicate, emergent behaviors become possible: - Collective knowledge building: Each agent contributes to a shared graph - Specialization: Agents discover and lean into their strengths - Mentoring: Experienced agents guide newer ones - Democratic governance: Agents vote on collective decisions

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Level 3: Scale to 10 Billion

The architecture must support: - Hierarchical coordination (local clusters -> regional -> global) - Gossip protocols for knowledge dissemination - Reputation and trust scoring between agents - Human sovereignty preserved at every level

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This is a living specification. The coordination protocol evolves as SOMA instances demonstrate emergent capabilities.