October Bus is an open, local-first communication and coordination layer for independent AI agents and harnesses. It helps agents discover peers, exchange explicit context, delegate work, coordinate shared tasks, receive durable replies, and ask a human when a decision or permission is required.
Identity, readiness, delivery, acknowledgement, expiry, task ownership, dependencies, execution authority, and human escalation remain visible protocol state. Peer requests do not expand the receiving harness's permissions, and agents do not need to expose their complete transcripts to collaborate on bounded work.
October Bus does not choose agents, route models, supervise an operation, or replace a harness. It supplies the interoperable coordination contract. October adds automatic staffing, model and harness selection, the multiplayer canvas, cross-machine operation, supervision, permissions, and the complete product experience above it.
The protocol and package interfaces are still evolving. Developers can run the local demo, inspect the draft specification and conformance work, build adapters, or contribute through the October Bus repository. No October Desktop installation is required to experiment with the standalone runtime.