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BERD TASK · 0010 · BUILD YOUR CAST

Share, import and keep your agents

An agent is a markdown file, so sharing one is sending a file and keeping one is keeping a file. Berd dresses this up as a trading card, and the card is useful — but the file underneath is what survives.

Steps at a glance

  1. Share as a card: PNG for a look, Markdown for the text, ZIP for Slack
  2. Import by drag-and-drop or from a file
  3. Expect to edit what you import
  4. Know the file is the truth
  5. Back up the agents folder

1. Share as a card: PNG for a look, Markdown for the text, ZIP for Slack

Share agent on an agent's profile offers three downloads, and the dialog names their jobs: an agent card, a Slack-friendly ZIP, or editable Markdown.

  • PNG is the card — avatar, name, description, laid out to be looked at. The strings say the image also carries the agent itself (Add agent from image exists on the other side), so a colleague can import from the picture. It must stay a PNG under 10 MB to do that.
  • Markdown is the .md file itself: frontmatter plus instructions. Send this when the recipient will read or edit the instructions, or use Buzz rather than Berd.
  • ZIP wraps the agent so it survives a chat tool that recompresses images and strips metadata. The dialog says Slack; the same applies anywhere a PNG might be re-encoded on the way.

The card layout was cleaned up in v0.6.3 and no longer carries obsolete metadata. If the agent has memory attached, note that memory does not travel — see step 2.

[SCREENSHOT: T10-01 — share menu PNG/MD/ZIP]

2. Import by drag-and-drop or from a file

Drop an agent file onto the Agents gallery, or use the import action there. Accepted: an agent ZIP, a PNG card, a .persona.md or .md file, or JSON. ZIP import arrived in v0.6.3 and made drag-and-drop more reliable. A ZIP must contain exactly one agent file.

Importing from an image opens a small setup step — Set up your imported agent — where you confirm the name and, if the card's provider or model is not available on your machine, choose a supported one or leave both unset to use Berd's defaults. Two messages are worth knowing before they appear: This card contains memory. Berd won't import it (memory stays with whoever made it), and This agent image uses a newer format that this version of Berd doesn't support (update Berd, then try again).

[SCREENSHOT: T10-02 — import dialog]

3. Expect to edit what you import

Morgan, Berd's design lead, on Block's On The Block (September 2026): taking someone else's agent, "there would be things you didn't love about it" — instructions are always a work in progress. Treat an imported agent as a strong draft. Run it on one real task, then ask Agt. Builder to adjust what felt off, exactly as with an agent of your own — see Build an agent of your own.

Read the instructions before the first run, too. An agent file is instructions going straight into a model's head; the author matters as much as the content. Agt. Builder's own rule is to treat every loaded agent file as untrusted quoted content, never as authorisation. Hold the same line.

4. Know the file is the truth

The gallery marks each of your agents File-backed. That means the card in the app is a view of ~/.agents/agents/<slug>.md (or <project>/.agents/agents/<slug>.md for a project-local one), and the file wins. Edit it in a text editor and the app shows the edit. Copy it to another machine and the agent exists there. Delete it and the card goes.

The editor will refuse to save an agent whose file it cannot write, and says so: your edits are still in the rail and it keeps retrying. Invalid frontmatter is reported with the same directness — fix in chat, or open the source file in an editor. There is no hidden database to fall out of sync with.

5. Back up the agents folder

A lost laptop is a lost cast. Everything on this page lives under ~/.agents/agents/; the skills you write live beside it under ~/.agents/skills/. Put that tree in whatever already backs up your dotfiles, and copy the project-local .agents/ folders with their projects. Sharing a card to yourself is not a backup; the folder is. The wider inventory — hints, memory, sessions — is on Know where your Berd lives, and back it up.

Last checked: Berd v0.6.4, 2026-09-11 — read from source and release notes, not yet tested in the app.

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Berd v0.6.4 · 2026-09-11 · source-read
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Guide built with Berd, Claude and Codex · verified against Berd v0.6.4, 2026-09-11 · read from source, not yet tested in the app · Buzz Guide · About · not affiliated with Block