Agent Crews (the mission task tree)

What it is

A crew on the mission loop files its work as a tree. The mission's outcome is a promise, broken into deliverables, and every task names the deliverable it serves — directly, or through its parent task. A task with no deliverable is refused, which is the rule that keeps a crew's board from filling with work that answers to nothing.

Each run of a task is an attempt: one row of the work queue, made the moment you mark the task ready, and recorded for good — who it was, which revision of the task it was briefed on, what it reported, and how it ended. A task can run as a swarm: several attempts at once from one brief, and you pick the one whose work you want.

The app, not you, starts attempts. When you mark a task ready it is launched as soon as one of the lead's worker slots is free — that limit is one number for the whole crew, used by both the work dispatcher and the door that spawns sessions, so a launch can never squeeze in past it.

Where to find it

There is no screen for this. The tree is driven through the crew's own endpoints, described under For agents below, and read back with one call that returns the whole tree.

How it behaves

• A task says why it matters. A new tree task carries a reason of its own (up to 500 characters) and up to eight tags, so a worker reading it knows what its work is for.
• Ready is an act, not a flag. Marking ready inserts the attempt rows and sets the task's picked attempt to its only row. While any row of that roster is still open the task is never launched again; a worker who reported success keeps its slot's record until its work lands.
• Retries are bounded. A launch that produced no session is retried up to three times; a run that ended with no report is not relaunched by itself; after three failed runs at one revision the task must be rewritten before it can be marked ready again.
• A rewriting needs a verdict for every open attempt. Change what a worker was briefed with and you must say, for each open attempt, that you keep it, supersede it or cancel it. A superseded row may still report, but its result can never be picked or close the task.
• Code closes on landing. A tree code task is never closed by hand. When the attempt you picked has its branch recorded as landed after that attempt started, the app closes the task itself and writes the commit onto it. Research and design tasks still close by hand.
• A parent waits for its children. A task with an open subtask cannot close done.
• Work from before the tree keeps its old rules. Tasks filed before the crew moved onto the tree have no deliverable, show in their own group, are never given a made-up link, and keep the close rules they had.
• Off-mission work has a home. Work accepted from another crew lands under the crew's "Asks from other crews" deliverable and is budgeted at a fifth of the lead's workers.

Related

How a crew is registered, what a member is and how its roster is read is on Agent Crews; the mission loop — tickets, the wake, the seat and the hand-over — is on Agent Crews part 3. Read those two first if you are new to crews, and this page when you are about to file, start, pick or close a piece of work.