SELF-
DEFINING
SYSTEMS
University of Washington
Systems that define themselves from specification through deployment—and refine from operational experience.
Core thesis
01
Time to integrate
Hours to days, not months or years, for new workloads and technologies.
02
Scalable agency
Agents exploring architecture and integration paths in parallel, with safeguards for reliability.
03
Spec → code → ops loop
From spec to generated code to deployment. Operational experience feeds back, closing the loop.
What we're building
Self-Defining Operator
The SDO deploys and operates applications with agents and long-term memory—resolving issues faster by recognizing patterns from past incidents.
Blog: agents that remember →Recent
Blog · Mar 2026The Long Game: How Agents That Remember Resolve Operational Issues Faster
Vic Shihang Li et al.