Interface Layer — Human Interaction
This layer handles:
- User inputs
- Output presentation
- Explanations
- Transparency
Examples:
- Web dashboards
- Chat interfaces
- Internal tools
- Reports and alerts
The guiding principle is that humans must always understand what the system did and why.
Ingestion Layer — Input Processing
This layer prepares information for intelligence.
Responsibilities:
- Input validation
- Normalization
- Chunking large content
- Metadata tagging
- Security and maskingy
Ingestion ensures that agents reason on clean, relevant, and permitted data.
Bad ingestion produces confident nonsense downstream.
Orchestration Layer — System Control Plane
Orchestration is the spine of the architecture.
It governs:
- Workflow sequencing
- Agent activation
- Conditional logic
- Error handling
- Human-in-the-loop triggers
- Stop and fail-safe conditions
Orchestration ensures that intelligence behaves consistently and within defined constraints, even when reasoning is probabilistic.
Agent Layer — Decision-Making Units
Agents are specialised decision-makers.
each agent:
- Has a defined role
- Operates within authority limits
- Uses memory selectively
- Acts through approved channels
Agents do not operate freely or independently.
They operate inside orchestration and governance.
Memory Layer — Context and Knowledge
Memory supports decision quality.
Architectural memory types:
- Short-term context
- Long-term knowledge
- Episodic outcomes
- Operational state
Memory
access is:
- Intentional
- Permissioned
- Logged
Memory without structure is noise.
Structure without memory is blindness.
Action and Integration Layer — Execution
This layer connects decisions to reality.
Responsibilities:
- API calls
- System updates
- Notifications
- Task creation
- External integrations
Architectural requirements:
- Reliability
- Reversibility
- Traceability
- Access control
Governance and Safety Layer — Control Overlay
Governance overlays the entire architecture.
It enforces:
- Guardrails
- Role-based access
- Approval workflows
- Audit logs
- Compliance
constraints
Governance is not a module.
It is a cross-cutting concern.
Intelligence Layer — Reasoning Engines
This layer supports agent reasoning.
Includes:
- Language models
- Classifiers
- Rules engines
- Hybrid logic
Key architectural principle:
Intelligence must be replaceable without collapsing the system.
Observation and Feedback Layer — Learning Loop
This layer
monitors:
- Decisions
- Confidence levels
- Errors
- Overrides
- Outcomes
Feedback
informs:
- Orchestration rules
- Memory relevance
- Guardrail tuning
- System
improvement
Without observation, systems stagnate.
