A manager agent access a grain hierarchy that represents a state for a computation that is to performed by a distributed processing system, wherein the grain hierarchy includes manager agent grains including metadata for manager agent processes that manage the performance of the computation by the distributed processing system, and worker agent grains including, for tasks to be performed by the distributed processing system, metadata for worker agents that each correspond to a subset of the plurality of data processors for performing the task. A manager agent performs processes defined by a manager agent grain to manage the computation by worker agents and storing, within the grain, metadata describing the manager agent process performed by the manager agent, and worker agents perform tasks assigned to the worker agents based on an assignment of a respective worker agent grain to the worker agent.