Castellan's page, and how the manor works

What Castellan is#

Castellan keeps your manor: the household of local AI agents on this PC. Each agent is an employee that holds a role, an office of a medieval manor: the Porter keeps the gate, the Smith keeps the forge every trade works from, the Herald brings the news. You're the lord of the manor: the staff work for you, and nothing that changes your files or your PC happens without your say-so.

Everything runs on this PC, on its own NPU, graphics card or processor. Your files, and what the agents find in them, stay here. An agent reaches the internet only when that's its job: the Herald fetching the news you follow, say. The privacy notice lists everything that's sent, and why.

Castellan itself does five things for the staff:

• Hires and lets them go, one role at a time. See Hiring, switching and letting staff go.
• Keeps them up to date, when you let it. See Updates.
• Keeps them answering. Every two minutes it checks that each one on duty answers, and opens again any that has stopped. See Needs you, notifications and quiet hours.
• Backs up their settings, every day. See Backups.
• Shares out the accelerators, so the agents take turns on the NPU and the graphics card instead of fighting over them. See Where the work runs.

Opening Castellan's page#

Castellan's page is a page in your browser, served by Castellan on this PC, for this PC only: http://castellan.localhost:18585/. The Castellan shortcut in the Start menu and on the desktop opens it, starting Castellan first if it needs to. Castellan starts by itself when you sign in to Windows.

What's on the page#

The title bar

The manor's icon and name (back to the manor from anywhere), a pill for the NPU (NPU free, or which agent is using it), About, Settings, and the Theme menu. The theme you choose (Match Windows, Light, Dark, or one of six colour themes) is worn by Castellan's page and every agent's.

The manor at a glance

Tiles under the banner: the roles held, how many of their holders are running, the updates out, the NPU, and, with the Surveyor hired, the repairs to make. Each opens its section. Below them, a chip for each role, its dot showing its holder's state: a quick way to jump to one card on a phone.

Needs you

A band across the top when something needs you: an agent that won't come back on its own, an update that keeps failing, backups that have failed two days running, a port another program has taken. Each item says what's wrong and links to the page whose button settles it. See Needs you, notifications and quiet hours.

Updates and Repairs

Updates lists what's out, with Update all and Check now. With the Surveyor hired, Repairs lists the problems it has found, each with its evidence and a fix. See Updates.

This PC and its accelerators

This PC's name, Windows, processor, cores and memory, with bars for the memory in use and the system drive. Beside it, a card for each accelerator (the NPU, each graphics card, the processor): which agent is using it, for how long, and who's waiting.

The roles

A card for each role, the biggest work first. A collapsed card shows its holder's icon and name, a dot for its state (gold while it's using an accelerator), what it does, its rounds (what it's doing now, when its last run ended and whether it failed, when the next is due), its version, and its buttons:

Expand shows the rest: what the agent does in full, the office's history, its duty, What's new in an update, and Holder, to give the role to another agent or leave it vacant.

The page refreshes every few seconds while you're looking at it.

About

About, in the title bar, explains how the manor runs day to day: who answers to whom, which roles work together, and where each agent's work runs (the NPU, a graphics card or the processor), so the processor or the NPU busy for a moment, then quiet again, has an answer.

Where to go next#

• Castellan's settings, one by one
• Backups
• When something isn't right with Castellan