Interpretable Context Methodology: Folder Structure as Agentic Architecture
This addresses the problem of excessive complexity in AI agent orchestration for sequential, human-reviewed workflows, offering a simpler, open-source solution.
The paper tackles the engineering overhead of multi-agent frameworks for sequential AI workflows by introducing the Model Workspace Protocol (MWP), which uses a filesystem structure with numbered folders and markdown files to orchestrate a single AI agent, eliminating the need for complex frameworks.
Current approaches to AI agent orchestration typically involve building multi-agent frameworks that manage context passing, memory, error handling, and step coordination through code. These frameworks work well for complex, concurrent systems. But for sequential workflows where a human reviews output at each step, they introduce engineering overhead that the problem does not require. This paper presents Model Workspace Protocol (MWP), a method that replaces framework-level orchestration with filesystem structure. Numbered folders represent stages. Plain markdown files carry the prompts and context that tell a single AI agent what role to play at each step. Local scripts handle the mechanical work that does not need AI at all. The result is a system where one agent, reading the right files at the right moment, does the work that would otherwise require a multi-agent framework. This approach applies ideas from Unix pipeline design, modular decomposition, multi-pass compilation, and literate programming to the specific problem of structuring context for AI agents. The protocol is open source under the MIT license.