What Is a Profile

A profile defines the behavioral boundary of an Agent. In NeuroBook v3, a profile is the agent type: creating a leader.default, a writer or a retrieval all amount to creating a session of some profile.

Most users only ever need to pick a profile. Profile authors have to understand the TSX Profile DSL, tool permissions, input and output schemas, dynamic context, compaction policy, summarization policy and Runtime Hooks.

What a Profile Contains

At minimum, a profile contains:

• manifest.key: the stable profile key, for example leader.default.
• manifest.name: the user-visible name.
• initialSchema: the input contract used when a session is created.
• outputSchema: the output contract used when a structured result is required.
• tools: the root tool binding object for this profile. It determines the tool schemas the model sees and the maximum tool permissions.
• toolKeys: optional, narrows down which tools the main run can actually execute. When it is not declared, it equals every key of the root tools.
• context(ctx): builds system, history, dynamic context and reminders with the TSX DSL. Mutually exclusive with prepare — declaring both is an error.
• runtimeDefaults: declares only the factory defaults for summarization, compaction and the file-change budget. At runtime the Harness layers Global / Project shared values and Profile overrides on top.
• capabilities.creation: only public allows another Agent to spin it up with create_agent; system_only is created solely by internal Harness flows.
• home: this profile's own resource directory (personas, style presets, reference material).
• skills.include: the Skill allowlist. Visibility in the catalog is not permission — the allowlist is applied uniformly in the prepare layer.
• runtime hooks: control bypasses and lifecycle behavior.

Runtime policy does not belong to settingsForm. The final precedence is fixed: Harness defaults < Profile runtimeDefaults < Global shared values < Global Profile overrides < Project shared values < Project Profile overrides. Discriminated unions (the compaction trigger and keep-recent, for example) are replaced wholesale by the higher layer; everything else is inherited field by field.

When a structured result is required, a profile returns it through report_result.

System Profiles and User Profiles

Built-in system profiles live in:

assets/workspace/.nbook/agent/profiles/builtin/

User overrides and custom profiles live in:

workspace/.nbook/agent/profiles/

The runtime uses the .compiled artifact. Saving a TSX source file does not mean it has taken effect at runtime — you have to compile it through the Workbench or with profile compile.

Common Built-in Profiles

There are 14 built-in profiles today.

Main writing chain:

Profile	Responsibility
leader.default	Overall dispatcher for an ordinary novel project. Holds the full set of plot read/write and World Engine tools, and handles Skills, writer, retrieval, researcher and the writing workflow.
writer	Writes finished prose. A long-lived session that gets its task and target file each round through a message plus payload. Read-only against plot and the World Engine.
retrieval	Content node recall and candidate judgment.
researcher	Online research and source verification.
world.engine	Maintenance and validation of a complex World Engine, in readwrite mode.
director	Story director. An advanced manual profile, not a required stop in ordinary writing.

Background and support (not created directly by users):

Profile	Responsibility
inline.editor	The Inline AI in Markdown Studio, running as its own background session.
summarizer	Generates session titles and summaries in the background.
memory.curator	Produces memory patches for subject_memory_update.
leader.assets	Helps you understand and maintain user-assets, profiles and skills.

RP / world simulation (entry points taken down, redesign in progress):

Profile	Responsibility
rp.leader	RP hosting and screenwriting entry point.
rp.writer	Renders the visible prose of an RP turn.
simulator.leader	World simulation supervisor.
simulator.actor	Roleplay agent for a single subject.

There is one more kind that never lands in a directory: the adhoc profile, a temporary agent that declares nothing but a prompt and an output structure, created by a workflow at runtime and thrown away after use. See Workflows and Jobs.

Keep Reading

• Leader: how the default leader dispatches writing, retrieval, research and RP.
• Writer: the prose-writing boundaries of the ordinary writer.
• Other Profiles: retrieval, summarizer, assets and the RP profiles.
• Profile Guide: the main entry point for profile authors.