Yao — App Runtime for the AI Era

Yao is an open-source runtime for building AI agents and web applications — shipped as a single binary.

🏠 Homepage: https://yaoagents.com

📚 Docs: https://yaoagents.com/docs

🖥️ Yao Desktop: https://yaoagents.com/download

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How It Works

Think of Yao Agent as a cage, not an animal. What you put inside determines the behavior; the cage keeps it controlled.

Every request flows through the same pipeline:

Create Hook runs before the executor — inject context, enforce constraints, route requests.
Next Hook runs after — validate output, trigger downstream actions, drive multi-step loops.
The AI does the heavy lifting. You define the boundaries.

Three Modes

Mode	Executor	When to use
LLM	OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.	Conversational assistants, Q&A, content generation
CLI Agent	OpenCode, Claude Code, Codex in a container	Computer use, sandbox isolation, SKILL ecosystem
Pure Hook	Your own TypeScript code	Deterministic logic, routing, menu flows — no AI needed

All three share the same Hook interface. You can mix them freely — route some requests through the LLM, handle others with pure code, all inside a single Create Hook.

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Features

Agent Framework

• TypeScript Hooks — Create and Next hooks intercept every request; built-in V8 engine
• Native MCP Support — Connect tools via process, SSE, or STDIO transport
• Memory API — Four scopes: request-level, session, user, team
• Multi-Agent — Delegate to specialist agents or call agents in parallel
• CLI Agent / Sandbox — Run Claude Code (or other CLI runners) in an isolated container with VNC desktop support
• Skills Ecosystem — Drop reusable capability packs (SKILL.md) into any CLI Agent

Full-Stack Runtime

Everything in a single executable:

• Data Models — Define database tables and relations in JSON/YAML
• REST APIs — Map routes to model queries or TypeScript processors
• SUI Pages — Component-based web UI with server-side rendering
• Chat UI (CUI) — Built-in conversation interface for agents
• TypeScript — Built-in V8 engine; no Node.js required
• Single Binary — Runs on ARM64/x64; no Python, Node, or containers needed on the host

Built-in Search

• Vector Search — Embeddings with OpenAI or FastEmbed
• Knowledge Graph — Entity-relationship retrieval
• GraphRAG — Hybrid vector + graph search

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About the Name

Yao (爻, yáo) is the fundamental symbol in the I Ching — the building block of the eight trigrams. Like a binary digit, it has two states. Their combinations describe the patterns of everything.