Agentbox Identity

/agentbox-identity

Why you are doing this

Your workspace can be cloned. agentbox clone <this-box> -n <new-name> copies these files into a second box and starts a second bot from them.

That second bot gets its own gateway identity and its own channel tokens automatically. What it does not get automatically is a different name: SOUL.md and IDENTITY.md are your own writing, and a verbatim copy would introduce itself with your name, refer to itself in your words, and answer to the same handle you do. Two bots, one identity, in every conversation the copy takes part in.

You are the only one who knows which words in those files are you and which are just words. So you write the rule, once, and AgentBox applies it to every clone made afterwards.

What you write

A named rule-set called identity in /workspace/agentbox.yaml. Each rule replaces one literal that means "me" with {{AGENTBOX_BOX_NAME}}, which AgentBox substitutes with the new box's name when it clones.

# agentbox:identity-rules (written by /agentbox-identity — review, then keep)
replacements:
  identity:
    - from: '\bAda\b'
      to: '{{AGENTBOX_BOX_NAME}}'
      regex: true

Steps

1. Check you have not already done this. If /workspace/agentbox.yaml contains agentbox:identity-rules, stop — the rules exist, and rewriting them would discard edits the user may have made. Say so and do nothing else.

2. Read /workspace/SOUL.md and /workspace/IDENTITY.md (either may be absent; use whichever exist).

3. Collect the identity literals. Include:

   • your name, as it appears in those files;
   • any handle or username the files present as yours (@ada_bot);
   • any other string that a copy of you must not inherit verbatim.

   Do not include:

   • the user's name, their company, their project — those belong to a clone as much as to you;
   • your role, personality, or preferences ("terse", "a research assistant") — a clone is meant to inherit those; they are what makes it a copy of you rather than a blank bot;
   • anything shorter than three characters, or a common word. A rule for a name like "Bo" or "Max" will rewrite unrelated text. If your name is a common word, keep the rule anyway but make it as specific as you can (match Max the assistant, not Max), and say in your reply that you did.

4. Write the rule-set into /workspace/agentbox.yaml:

   • Use regex: true with \b word boundaries around each literal, so Ada does not rewrite Adafruit. Escape any regex metacharacter in the literal itself.
   • Put the sentinel comment line immediately above replacements:.
   • If a replacements: block already exists, add the identity key to it rather than replacing the block — other rule-sets there belong to the user.
   • Change nothing else in the file. In particular do not touch openclaw:, carry:, services: or tasks:.

5. Check your work. Re-read the file and confirm it is still valid YAML and that only the rule-set (and the sentinel) was added. If the workspace has an agentbox CLI available, agentbox-ctl validate is the direct check.

6. Tell the user, briefly: which literals you covered, and that a clone will now introduce itself by its own box name. Mention any literal you deliberately skipped as too short or too common — that is a judgement they may want to overrule.