StateM explicitly separates two functional architectural layers: the generic runtime and the task-specific control profile.

1. Generic Runtime: Provides reusable, workflow-agnostic mechanisms for state persistence, transition validation, hook execution, execution history logging, and fault recovery.
2. Control Profile: Encoded in a domain-specific runbook artifact, specifying the phases, contextual prompts, concrete exit checks, edge guards, and repair policies tailored to a particular class of work or benchmark.

This separation ensures that the core state-machine execution substrate remains static and reusable across diverse models and environments, while procedural knowledge and domain rules can be adapted and versioned independently.