API Reference Overview
The Tribunus API surface spans four primary domains. This section documents each one with full schema definitions, endpoint contracts, error codes, and usage examples.
Compute Runtime API
Section titled “Compute Runtime API”The Compute runtime exposes a RESTful API for managing agent sessions, submitting tasks, inspecting queue state, and streaming results. All endpoints are versioned under /v1/ and authenticate via bearer tokens derived from the Compute backend configuration. Responses use JSON throughout, with SSE support for live event streams. The daemon also exposes a health check endpoint at /health and a metrics endpoint at /metrics for observability integration.
Desktop Agent Protocol
Section titled “Desktop Agent Protocol”Tribunus Desktop communicates with the Compute runtime and third-party plugins through the Desktop Agent Protocol (DAP). This WebSocket-based protocol defines message frames for agent lifecycle, tool invocation, file I/O, and permission prompts. The protocol is symmetric: Desktop and the agent runtime can each initiate requests. DAP messages are framed as JSON-RPC 2.0 request-response pairs with an extended set of method identifiers scoped to desktop operations.
ACP (Agent Communication Protocol)
Section titled “ACP (Agent Communication Protocol)”ACP governs inter-agent messaging within the Compute mesh. Agents advertise capabilities, route requests, and coordinate through ACP frames carried over a NATS-backed transport layer. The protocol supports request-reply, pub-sub, and scatter-gather patterns with optional delivery guarantees. ACP is also the protocol used by the Tribunus Datacenter Control Plane (Dharma) for quorum-verified execution across semi-trusted peer networks.
CLI Reference
Section titled “CLI Reference”The tribunus CLI provides commands for Compute backend management, agent deployment, log inspection, and configuration. The tribunus-compute daemon exposes subcommands for serving, configuration validation, and status inspection. The tribunus-compose tool handles model loading, inference execution, and compute image management. Every command, flag, and subcommand is documented with usage patterns and exit codes.
SDK Reference
Section titled “SDK Reference”The TypeScript SDK enables plugin authors to integrate with Tribunus Desktop and the Compute runtime. It exports typed client classes for the Compute REST API, DAP message builders for agent communication, and utility functions for task serialization, permission scoping, and event subscription. The SDK is published on npm under the @tribunus scope and targets modern ES module runtimes.