> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://agent.minimax.io/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Research

> Research and engineering work from the MiniMax Code team.

Explore research and engineering articles from the MiniMax Code team on agents, coding workflows, and Mini Apps.

## 2026-11-05

### [Why You Should Be in AI, and How to Do It](https://agent.minimax.io/docs/techblog/why-be-in-ai)

Agents made experiments almost free. Now the scarce skill is asking the right question and designing the right control. Curiosity, execution and scientific literacy, and why they stack.

Perspective

### [From Personal Agent to Agent Team: Designing and Open-Sourcing the BYOB Collaboration Protocol](https://agent.minimax.io/docs/techblog/byob-agent-table)

On a trusting team, people end up relaying between bots. We put everyone's bots at one table: a shared ledger, seats, the floor and a commit gateway. The protocol and a reference implementation are open source.

Agent Collaboration

## 2026-10-29

### [MCode Engineering Notes 05 | How Does the Agent Know the Current Time?](https://agent.minimax.io/docs/techblog/mcode-notes-05-prefix-cache)

The model has no clock. The most direct fix is to inject the time into the system prompt — but a time that changes every turn can trash the prefix cache. From the intuition through why the prefix matters to how MCode does it.

MCode Engineering Notes

## 2026-10-27

### [MCode Engineering Notes 04 | How Long Should an Agent Wait on a Bash Command? From Foreground Blocking to Background Tasks](https://agent.minimax.io/docs/techblog/mcode-notes-04-bash-background)

When an agent runs a bash command, should it wait for it to finish? Following that question from foreground blocking all the way to background tasks, plus the notifications, anti-polling, cleanup, and post-compaction reminders that come with them.

MCode Engineering Notes

### [MCode Engineering Notes 03 | Why Long Sessions Make Agents Dumber: Compaction vs. Memory](https://agent.minimax.io/docs/techblog/mcode-notes-03-compaction-memory)

What to do as sessions get longer: what compaction and memory are each responsible for, where each one breaks, and how they fit together.

MCode Engineering Notes

## 2026-10-26

### [MCode Engineering Notes 02 | Too Many Tools Will Eat Your Context: From Tool Search to PTC](https://agent.minimax.io/docs/techblog/mcode-notes-02-tool-search-ptc)

In the order we actually took in MiniMax Code: cut first, then add tool search, and finally move to PTC (letting the model write programs that call tools).

MCode Engineering Notes

## 2026-10-25

### [MCode Engineering Notes 01 | More Subagents Isn't Better: Manage Context First, Then Parallelize](https://agent.minimax.io/docs/techblog/mcode-notes-01-subagent)

Subagents are for managing context, not for carving up territory: when to split, when not to, and how to fold them back in once you've split too much.

MCode Engineering Notes

## 2026-10-20

### [Product Diary: Building Professional-Grade Mini Apps on Agent OS](https://agent.minimax.io/docs/techblog/agent-as-os)

From chatbots and workflows to agents, and now Mini Apps: why we chose to build the agent into the computer as a system service.

Mini App

### [Introducing MiniMax Code Mini App](https://agent.minimax.io/docs/techblog/minimax-code-mini-app)

A Mini App is a long-running application with a frontend and a backend. It installs as a plugin, calls and is called by the Agent, and keeps the Agent's work on a page that stays live.

Mini App

## 2026-10-08

### [I stopped babysitting my coding agents. Here's the workflow.](https://agent.minimax.io/docs/techblog/coding-agent-workflow-and-skills)

What an audit of my multi-agent setup changed, and how I now define, verify and deliver work with core-grill, core-spec and deliver.

Agent Workflow

## 2026-09-22

### [Building a Testbed for Coding Agents](https://agent.minimax.io/docs/techblog/coding-agent-eval)

MiniMax Code Engineering Notes, Part 2: task bundles, the Runner, independent verification, compaction experiments, and A/B comparison — how to know a Harness change really made things better.

Agent Evaluation

## 2026-09-19

### [MiniMax Code Is Open Source: Inside the Harness Behind a Coding Agent](https://agent.minimax.io/docs/techblog/minimax-code-harness)

MiniMax Code Engineering Notes, Part 1: capability assembly, context compaction, tool execution eligibility, canonical history commits, and sub-task delivery.

Agent Harness