Introduction

Kairo (from Greek Kairos — the decisive moment for action) is a Java Agent operating system that provides a complete runtime environment for AI agents. Rather than being yet another LLM wrapper, Kairo models the agent runtime as an operating system, mapping every component to a familiar OS concept.

Kairo is not a wrapper — it's infrastructure. Think Netty for networking, Jackson for serialization, Kairo for AI Agents.

OS Concept Mapping

OS Concept	Kairo Mapping	Description
Memory	Context	Context window as bounded memory with intelligent compaction
System Call	Tool	21+ specialized tools — the agent's interface to the outside world
Process	Agent	Independent execution unit driven by a ReAct loop
File System	Memory	Persistent knowledge storage (file / in-memory)
Signal	Hook	10 hook points with CONTINUE/MODIFY/SKIP/ABORT/INJECT decisions
Executable	Skill	Plug-and-play capability packs in Markdown format
Job Scheduling	Task + Team	Multi-agent task orchestration and team collaboration
IPC	A2A Protocol	Agent-to-Agent communication for cross-agent invocation
Middleware	Middleware Pipeline	Declarative request/response interception
Checkpoint	Snapshot	Agent state serialization and restoration

Why Kairo

Kairo is built on Project Reactor for fully reactive, non-blocking execution and supports Claude, GLM, Qwen, GPT, and other models out of the box. The framework is model-agnostic — swap providers without changing agent logic.