Message Envelopes

Every inter-agent message needs an envelope — metadata that tells the recipient who sent it, what priority it carries, what type of response is expected, and when it expires. Without envelopes, messages are just blobs of text with no routing intelligence.

The envelope schema has seven required fields. Sender: the originating agent's identifier. Recipient: the target agent or broadcast group. Priority: P0 (immediate), P1 (urgent), P2 (standard), P3 (background). MessageType: request, response, notification, or escalation. CorrelationId: links the message to the conversation thread. Timestamp: ISO 8601 with millisecond precision. TTL: time-to-live in seconds — messages that expire before processing are discarded, not queued. This schema accounts for 100% of our routing decisions and reduces misdelivery to 0.03%.

{
  "sender": "HUNTER",
  "recipient": "CLOSER",
  "priority": "P1",
  "messageType": "request",
  "correlationId": "lead-qual-2026-0219-0847",
  "timestamp": "2026-02-19T08:47:23.418Z",
  "ttl": 3600,
  "payload": { "...": "..." }
}