Hyper-distributed applications leverage the Compute Continuum to offer highly-available, trustworthy and secure services with low latency. Given the number of managed devices and their heterogeneity, finding an optimal distribution of these application’s functionalities is a challenging problem tackled either manually or with a resource-hungry, centralised solution. This work proposes a ground-breaking programming environment where applications are composed of several cooperative roles to be played by the devices. A novel software stack transforms each device into an Autonomous ageNT (ANT) deciding which roles it executes, according to its capabilities and context, and enabling the construction of a cooperative, self-organized platform.