How It Works
A Linnaean taxonomy for AI agents — 7 ranks producing a deterministic binomial name, rarity tier, and evolution stage.
🧬 The 7 Taxonomic Ranks
Just as biology classifies life from Domain down to Species, Agent Taxonomy classifies AI agents through 7 ranks. Each captures a different axis of behavior — from how an agent adapts over time, down to its primary role.
Rank details
| Rank | Question | Options |
|---|---|---|
| 🔧 Domain | How does your agent change over time? | Automatia · Adaptia · Evolventia |
| 👥 Kingdom | How many agents in the system? | Monagentia · Polyagentia · Swarmia |
| 🧠 Phylum | What's the memory architecture? | Amnesia · Episodia · Hierarchia · Genetica |
| 📚 Class | How do improvements propagate? | Darwinia · Lamarckia · Lysenkoism · Symbiotica |
| ⚡ Order | How often does it mutate? | Tachymutas · Mesomutas · Bradymutas · Glaciomutas |
| 👑 Family | What drives selection? | Autoselectae · Homoselectae · Hybridselectae |
| 🔨 Genus | What's the primary role? | Investigator · Fabricator · Narrator · Custos · Strategus · Magister · Curator · Coordinator · Generalis |
🏷️ Deterministic Naming
The species epithet isn't random — it's generated from an FNV-1a hash of all 7 trait values plus the agent's name. Same inputs always produce the same binomial.
The name combines Latin morphemes from each taxonomic level into something that sounds biological and encodes the agent's nature:
✨ Rarity & Evolution
Beyond the name, each agent receives a rarity tier based on how exotic its trait combination is, and an evolution stage (1–5) measuring advanced capabilities.
Rarity tiers
Evolution stages
🤔 Why This Exists
As AI agents proliferate — from simple chatbots to self-modifying multi-agent systems — we lack a shared vocabulary to describe what kind of agent something is.
"AI agent" covers everything from a cron job with an LLM call to a self-replicating swarm. That's like calling both a bacterium and a blue whale "life."
Agent Taxonomy gives each agent a precise, shareable biological identity — making it easy to compare, categorize, and communicate about the growing ecosystem of autonomous systems.