KOS provides a Handle object and HandleAware interface. Any object that needs to be identified implements HandleAware and has a Handle property. As these objects are added to other HandleAware objects, the handles are chained together back to a root. This results in each object having an identity, which is constructed from the path from the root to the object. Many core pieces of KOS are HandleAware, and automatically chain objects together so in many cases the construction of handle paths is not visible to the developer. As handle paths are constructed from the path to an object, the resulting identity is human readable, such as :

Every HandleAware object is tracked within KOS. The HandleService can be used to return any object from its handle. This service tracks objects with weak references so the objects are free to be garbage collected when no longer in use. Accessing objects from handles via endpoints is so common that KOS provides a standard endpoint annotation for this use case. Simply define the url parameter that contains a handle path and declare the class of the expected object, and the web server will return the object directly to the endpoint callback. Handles also play a critical role in the KOS configuration system. Every configurable object in KOS is HandleAware, allowing the configuration system to find the live object, update it and persist changes using the handle path as the key for the object.