Crystals
A Crystal is a reusable, governed skill that forms when a task pattern proves repeatable. Unlike a saved prompt or a manually authored skill, a Crystal is distilled from actual executions — the observations, tool calls, and outcomes of real runs.
New to the idea? Start with the story version: how intelligence compounds from chat request to crystal.
The two kinds of Crystal
QuoxCORE 2 introduces two formation paths.
Task-time candidate
Formed during a live run. Quox Brain monitors the agent loop in real time: before the loop starts, it retrieves relevant Crystals from the library; mid-loop, it drafts a Crystal candidate based on the observation stream; at the end of the task, the candidate is proposed to the user with a diff of what was learned.
No human action is needed for the draft to appear — but promotion requires explicit approval.
Post-hoc canonical
Created manually by a user or team after reviewing a completed run. The user selects an execution, gives the Crystal a name and description, and promotes it to the library. Post-hoc Crystals are the traditional path for formalising institutional knowledge that already works.
The promotion lifecycle
Every Crystal moves through four states:
- Draft — automatically created by Quox Brain during a task run, or manually authored. Not yet visible in the library.
- Candidate — proposed to the user for review. The observation diff, suggested instructions, and recommended scope are shown.
- Canonical — approved. Available in the Crystal library, retrievable by Quox Brain before future runs, and executable directly from the Home view.
- Deprecated — superseded by a newer version or manually retired. Preserved in audit history; no longer retrieved for new runs.
Tier gating
Task-time crystallisation — the automated mid-run drafting path — is a Compliance Suite (tier_b) feature. Post-hoc promotion is available on all tiers. The Crystal library and Run-now Crystals from the Home view are available on all tiers. Quox Brain suggestions that reference Crystals require tier_b or above.
Crystals vs Skills vs Prompts
Distilled from real executions. Has governance trail, budget envelope, and audit record. Promoted explicitly. The primitive you use when a pattern is proven.
A manually authored, script-like instruction set. No execution history. No audit trail. Being replaced by Crystals in QuoxCORE 2 — still supported for migration.
A saved instruction fragment owned by the user. Lives in the Prompts Library. Has no governance semantics — it is a reusable text snippet, not an executable pattern.
Governance trail
Every Crystal promotion generates an AOCL event. The originating execution, the approving user, and the timestamp are recorded. If a Crystal is run and a downstream policy gate triggers, the run trace links back to the Crystal definition. You can always answer: which Crystal triggered this run, who approved it, and what did it do.