Current LLM agent frameworks often implement isolation, scheduling, and communication at the application layer, even though these mechanisms are already provided by mature operating systems. Instead of introducing another application-layer orchestrator, this paper presents Quine, a runtime architecture and reference implementation that realizes LLM agents as native POSIX processes. The mapping is explicit: identity is PID, interface is standard streams and exit status, state is memory, environment variables, and filesystem, and lifecycle is fork/exec/exit. A single executable implements this model by recursively spawning fresh instances of itself. By grounding the agent abstraction in the OS process model, Quine inherits isolation, composition, and resource control directly from the kernel, while naturally supporting recursive delegation, context renewal via exec, and shell-native composition. The design also exposes where the POSIX process model stops: processes provide a robust substrate for execution, but not a complete runtime model for cognition. In particular, the analysis points toward two immediate extensions beyond process semantics: task-relative worlds and revisable time. A reference implementation of Quine is publicly available on GitHub.

翻译：当前的LLM智能体框架通常将隔离、调度和通信机制实现在应用层，尽管这些功能已由成熟的操作系统提供。本文不引入又一个应用层编排器，而是提出Quine——一种将LLM智能体实现为原生POSIX进程的运行时架构及参考实现。该映射关系明确：身份对应PID，接口对应标准流与退出状态，状态对应内存、环境变量与文件系统，生命周期对应fork/exec/exit。单个可执行文件通过递归生成自身新实例来实现该模型。通过将智能体抽象根基置于OS进程模型，Quine直接继承内核的隔离、组合与资源控制能力，同时天然支持递归委派、通过exec实现上下文更新以及Shell原生的组合机制。该设计也揭示了POSIX进程模型的边界：进程为执行提供了稳健基础，但并非完整的认知运行时模型。具体而言，分析指向了两个超出进程语义的直接扩展方向：任务相关世界与可修正时间。Quine的参考实现在GitHub上公开可用。