Work Items

Work items are the atomic, agent-executable units that planning produces. Each one is a markdown spec with a work contract defining floor (minimum deliverables) and ceiling (maximum scope), assigned to a single persistent agent and queued in that agent's work pile. This section covers the spec format, lifecycle states, dispatch mechanics, collaboration modes, and the validation checks that govern whether a work item can be delivered.

Spec Format

The structure of a work item spec file — YAML frontmatter fields, body sections, directory layout for wip-assets, artifacts, preview, delivery, and run records.

Work Contract Coverage

How floor and ceiling obligations are defined, verified, and enforced — completeness checks, parsimony checks, coverage modes, and the delivery validation algorithm that blocks remit abandonment and quarantines remit bloat.

State Transitions

The work item status lifecycle from pending through ready, running, awaiting-review, and awaiting-hitl to completed — plus failed and cancelled paths and the recovery protocol that reassigns failed work.

Context Envelope

The seven-component execution context assembled for each run — persona, active skills, work item spec, relevant memory, applicable policies, runtime state, and signal payload — along with context budget enforcement and truncation priorities.

Dispatch and Helpers

How ready work items are scheduled for parallel execution across persistent agents and ephemeral helpers — budget-aware dispatch, the execution input set, and the boundary between a helper's anonymous output and its parent agent's identity.

Collab Modes

The seven named interaction modes that govern multi-actor coordination on shared work — solo, handoff, delegate, consult, pair, shadow, and escalate — including write-access rules, message protocols, and mutex coordination for pair work.

Work Pile

The ordered queue of assigned work items per persistent agent — pile ordering by priority, due date, and creation time, bandwidth probes, and the 24-hour clearability constraint that feeds the routing layer.