Overseer worker titles (how a spawned worker is named)

What it is

What it is

When an Overseer spawns a worker session, that session is titled for it, in one fixed shape:

[<Category>] <Role> <N>: <Task>

For example [Verdict] Fixer 1: Fix the flaky auth test, or [WT Lifecycle] Red Teamer 2: Attack the lander contract.

The point is the session list. An Overseer runs several workers at once and they all look alike — a wall of "Session 47"-ish rows tells you nothing about who sent them, what they are for, or which one you are looking at. The title answers all four questions at a glance:

• [Category] — what the Overseer is managing, in its own one-or-two-word tag (Verdict, WT Lifecycle). It is what groups a crew together in the sidebar and separates it from everyone else's work.
• <Role> — the worker type's label, so it always matches what was actually asked for (Fixer, Auditor, Red Teamer, …).
• <N> — that role's running count under that Overseer: the 46th Fixer is numbered 46.
• <Task> — the job the Overseer wrote, shortened to fit.

Where to find it

The title appears on the spawned worker's own session row — in the session list, the inbox, and anywhere else that session is listed. There is no screen to open: the Overseer writes the title when it spawns the worker.

How it behaves

What you need to know

• The number never repeats, and it never resets. It comes from a stored counter per (Overseer, role), not a tally of the session rows — so archiving, deleting or retention-purging old workers cannot hand the same number out twice. "The 46th Fixer" always means one session.
• Numbering starts at 1 with no backfill. The worker type was never recorded on a session, so workers an Overseer ran before this shipped cannot be attributed to a role. Every (Overseer, role) pair begins at 1 and counts up cleanly from there.
• A title set this way is never rewritten. The AI auto-titler only acts on sessions still carrying a placeholder name, so a structured title is left alone.
• A gap is possible, a repeat is not. If a spawn fails after the number is handed out, that number is skipped. That is deliberate.
• Only Overseer spawns are affected. A cron spawn, an ordinary agent-driven spawn, and a session you start yourself keep exactly the naming they had.

For agents

How an Overseer gets one

The Overseer spawns through POST /agent/sessions and sends two fields beyond the job:

• agentType — a worker type from the closed registry (GET /overseer/agent-types). Its label becomes <Role>.
• category — its own short tag for the mission, at most 24 characters. This becomes [Category].

The Overseer does not send a name on this path; the server composes the whole title, and <N> is assigned at the moment the session is actually created (once per real spawn — a retried or re-approved request cannot consume a second number).

An Overseer that sends no category still gets a clean title — Fixer 1: Fix the flaky auth test — rather than an empty pair of brackets.

Notes for the curious

• A category that is too long, awkwardly spaced, or wrapped in its own brackets is trimmed down for the title rather than rejected — a real, paid worker is never refused over a cosmetic field.
• The category is cleaned of control and direction-override characters on arrival, because the spawn request rejects those outright and a stray one would otherwise fail the whole spawn.
• POST /project/<name>/new titles only review sessions for you — through its review field (see review-session-titles.md); any other session started that way is named like any other.

Related

• overseers.md — the Overseer that spawns these workers and the fleet it runs.
• agent-status-board.md — the board where worker sessions show up.