Durable goals are the persistence engine underneath Ambient Desktop's long-running work: the plan, its evidence, and the continuation state are written to disk and worked in a loop that can stop and resume.
Durable Goal Loops diagram. Four numbered stages run left to right. Stage 1 Goal holds Objective, Budget, Plan, and Status, and sets objective. Stage 2 Loop holds Work slice, Validate, Update plan, and Persist, and executes slice. Stage 3 Resume holds Read state, Continue, Repair, and Avoid drift, and persists state. Stage 4 Complete holds Audit, Proof, Commit, and Report, and reports proof. A durable goal state chip lists plan, budget, and proof.
In short: a durable goal cycles through Goal, Loop, Resume, and Complete, persisting its plan, budget, and proof to disk at every step.
Why durable goals exist#
A normal chat agent holds its plan in the conversation. Close the window, hit a crash, or run long enough that context is trimmed, and the plan is gone; the agent silently restarts from whatever it can still remember. For multi-step work, that is how tasks drift, repeat themselves, or quietly stop halfway.
Ambient instead writes the objective, the current plan, validation evidence, and continuation state to disk, then works the goal in a loop it can stop and resume. Give it a goal that takes hours, not seconds, and the work keeps its shape across turns, pauses, and restarts. Progress becomes a thing you can look at, not a thing you hope the model still has in context.
The six-step loop#
Every durable goal runs the same loop, and each step leaves a record, so you can always see where the goal is and what it has proven. The diagram above groups it into four visible phases (Goal, Loop, Resume, Complete); here it is broken into the six steps the engine actually runs:
- Plan. The goal becomes an ordered plan with a budget and explicit decisions. In Planner Mode you answer the open questions before work begins.
- Act. The agent executes the next slice of the plan (edits, commands, research, or a child agent) instead of trying to do everything in one turn.
- Validate. The slice is checked against its expected result with tests, commands, screenshots, or a review pass, and the evidence attaches to the work product.
- Persist. The updated plan, evidence, and continuation state are written to disk, so nothing important lives only in the conversation.
- Resume. After any interruption, the agent reads the persisted state and continues, repairing anything stale rather than starting over.
- Audit. Completion is judged against the original objective. A goal is not done because the agent said so; it is done when the audit passes.
What gets persisted#
Four things are kept on disk and kept current:
- The objective: the goal itself and its decisions, so success can be measured against what you actually asked for.
- The live plan: the current ordered steps, their status, and the budget, kept current rather than allowed to drift.
- Evidence: validation output, artifacts, screenshots, and source references, attached to each step.
- Continuation state: where the loop is and what comes next, so a resume picks up from saved state instead of memory.
If the app restarts mid-goal, Ambient reads the persisted plan, evidence, and continuation state and resumes from there. A reconciliation step repairs stale cache and missing artifacts before continuing, so a restart costs some progress, not the whole task.
Where you stay in control#
Durable does not mean unattended. Planner Mode and the Project Board's Draft Inbox are the review points: you approve decisions and cards before the loop expands execution.
Goals, the board, and Symphony#
Durable goals are the engine; the Project Board is the most visible way to see one, with the goal's plan rendered as cards with evidence and review surfaces. For goals that need more than one role or context window, a goal can drive Symphony to delegate scoped work to child agents and join their artifacts back into the plan.
Keep going#
- Project Board: the visible surface on top of the engine
- Symphony: multi-agent delegation for large goals
- Workflow Recorder: turning a proven path into a reusable workflow