Ex-Apple/NYT engineers open-source Terse: Durable Actor infra for multiplayer AI agents
ycombinator · x · 2026-10-30
YC F26 startup Terse launched an MIT-licensed open-source project plus a managed cloud version. Its core primitive is the Durable Actor: a tiny server handling one request at a time with its own SQLite database — an open-source alternative to Cloudflare's Durable Objects.
Key uses:
- Multiplayer agent deployment: each agent gets its own Durable Actor, users connect via websocket, fully horizontally scalable without pressuring a central DB or websocket server
- Agent coordination: serial per-request handling avoids data races, letting multiple agents concurrently touch critical data like a CRM
Ships with a one-command CLI (bunx terse-cli@latest install) and a self-hosted Helm chart. Founders are former staff engineers from Apple, The New York Times, and Squarespace; backed by Y Combinator (F26).
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