# Use cases

> Each scenario starts from something people already do, and shows which step Agent NAS changes, which conformance level it needs, and what you can build with today.

## An agent that runs overnight

Before bed you give an agent a task: tidy the release notes. It works on its own branch; in the morning you see a Gate Card on your phone: 4 files, the real diff, and the sources it read. Approve and it merges; reject and the branch is discarded, with the main line untouched.

- **Concepts used:** [Agent Branch](https://agentnas.com/concepts/agent-branch/), [Capability Lease](https://agentnas.com/concepts/capability-lease/), [Human Gate](https://agentnas.com/concepts/human-gate/).
- **Conformance:** L0 to L1.
- **Buildable today:** a Git worktree, a protected `main` and a push notification.

## Change frameworks, keep your memory

You move an agent from one runtime to another. Its Home is a directory following open conventions: `AGENTS.md`, `skills/`, `memory/notes/`. The new runtime reads the same directory; anything that maps lossily is marked unreviewed on import.

- **Concepts used:** [Agent Home](https://agentnas.com/concepts/agent-home/), [Agent Memory](https://agentnas.com/concepts/agent-memory/).
- **Conformance:** L0 to L2.
- **Buildable today:** a Git directory with an `AGENTS.md`.

## A team, several agents, one shared body of knowledge

Three agents write to the same knowledge base. Each works on its own branch and merges are reviewed; notes written by a run that read an external web page go into quarantine and are not autoloaded by other agents. What is shared is notes, not indexes.

- **Concepts used:** [Trust Labels](https://agentnas.com/concepts/trust-labels/), [Agent Memory](https://agentnas.com/concepts/agent-memory/), [Agent Branch](https://agentnas.com/concepts/agent-branch/).
- **Conformance:** L0 to L3.
- **Buildable today:** a protected main line, an `external` mark on the import directory, and a rule that autoloads only reviewed notes.

## Incident review

After a merge you find a page that looks wrong. `explain(commit)` tells you which run, which lease and which gate decided it; the read manifest shows that run read an external web page. You follow the provenance to the affected notes, roll back, and quarantine them.

- **Concepts used:** [Flight Recorder](https://agentnas.com/concepts/flight-recorder/), [Agent Branch](https://agentnas.com/concepts/agent-branch/).
- **Conformance:** L1.
- **Buildable today:** Git trailers in commits plus an append-only SQLite table.

## A customer asks to be forgotten

The customer’s data was marked with the `sensitive` retention class at write time. When the request arrives, Cascade Forget follows lineage to the summaries, embeddings and notes that cite it, destroys that key domain, and issues a report: what was done, and what could not be (copies outside the NAS, the model provider’s logs, model weights).

- **Concepts used:** [Cascade Forget](https://agentnas.com/concepts/cascade-forget/), [Agent Memory](https://agentnas.com/concepts/agent-memory/).
- **Conformance:** L3.
- **Buildable today:** retention classes, soft delete, and recording the inputs of every derivative.

## Add a door to a box you already own

You already have a NAS. The Overlay form puts a gateway in front of it and manages only one directory. Agents come and go through a mount or the S3 view; the owner’s backups and snapshots stay out of the agents’ reach.

- **Concepts used:** [Capability Lease](https://agentnas.com/concepts/capability-lease/), [Agent Branch](https://agentnas.com/concepts/agent-branch/).
- **Conformance:** L0 to L1.
- **Buildable today:** NFS or SMB plus a small gateway that checks tokens against a path prefix and an action.

## When not to use Agent NAS

| Your situation | A simpler approach |
| --- | --- |
| One agent, and data you can happily redo | A Git repository with an `AGENTS.md`. |
| You only want an agent to help manage your NAS | The vendor’s own management agent. |
| You only need forkable datasets | lakeFS or Tigris. |
| You only need memory retrieval | Any memory library. |
| You need isolated compute | A sandbox. |

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Canonical URL: https://agentnas.com/use-cases/
Updated: 2026-11-11 · Draft specification v0.2 · CC BY 4.0