Talon separates reusable agent design from runtime instances so behavior can be standardized without losing runtime flexibility.
Agent templates
Agent templates describe a reusable base:
- system prompt
- feature set
- model policy
- MCP server references
- capability policy
Templates let you standardize a class of agent and then apply targeted overrides later.
In practice, templates are where platform or product teams encode the safe default shape of an agent.
Agents
Agents are the runtime-facing resources created inside a namespace. An agent can be:
- fully custom
- derived from a template with deltas
The effective agent spec is what ultimately drives runtime behavior.
That effective spec is what the worker sees when it executes a turn.
Template deltas
When an agent is templated, it can still override parts of the base template:
- model policy
- system prompt
- features
- MCP server references
- capabilities
The important point is that Talon treats these overrides as structured deltas rather than unstructured prompt editing.
Why this split matters
This gives Talon a real control-plane model rather than “just prompt text”:
- templates can be curated centrally
- agents can inherit and override safely
- policies become explicit and reviewable
Where these show up operationally
- templates are often bootstrapped or curated globally
- agents are created inside namespaces
- sessions are always created against an agent, never directly against a template
See the generated manifest schema reference for the exact message shapes.