Who launches

flume decides nothing about what to launch. Its callers do, and each launches the same way: a repository, a kind, a brief and a name.

From the operator

/launch <brief> in any Claude Code session launches the brief, and the session that asked goes on with its own work, since the launch’s agent works in a place of its own. The herdr plugin’s key launches from herdr (The operator’s surfaces). Which repository and kind a /launch takes is on Open questions.

From millpond

millpond sends one item to one worktree through flume. The send names the repository and the kind, a fix or an OpenSpec change. millpond records the send and hands flume the item’s brief, and flume makes the place and starts the agent. The work submits through sluice, and millpond writes the landing against the item from sluice’s record of that branch (millpond’s items).

• An item that asks a question goes to a sounding, which launches its own place through flume.
• An inbox crew keeps sends no item to flume itself. Its settings hand items to crew’s planner, and millpond refuses a send from it.

From headwater

headwater’s fix key hands a release’s brief to flume as a fix (headwater’s surfaces). An agent starts in a place to make the bump, and submits it to sluice. The brief holds what the agent needs to move the pin (headwater’s briefs).

In a repository crew runs, a bump comes only as a chore crew’s planner makes from an item. There the fix key hands the release to millpond as a capture instead, and no agent starts outside crew’s plan.

From sounding

sounding launches the kind question for each sounding. flume makes the place and runs the round’s session in it. sounding keeps the question, its rounds and the operator’s decision on each conclusion (sounding’s book). A sounding waiting on the operator shows as a row in flume’s herdr sidebar.

From crew

crew starts each stage of a unit, a chore or a fix through flume, in a slot of its team, and reads each stage’s end from flume status. It calls flume’s command line, as it calls millpond’s and sluice’s, since crew’s Python uses only the standard library (code.1).

What crew keeps

crew keeps what spans many places:

• plans and bolts;
• slots, which bound how much of a team’s work is in flight;
• the dispatcher, which gives each team its next bolt;
• conductors, which run a team’s work through its stages;
• approvals, the operator’s word on each decision;
• conflicts between units, forecast and settled in the later unit’s place.

crew asks flume for each place and each stage’s agent, as it asks sluice for each landing, and no crew code makes a worktree itself. A unit in crew runs stages flume’s change does not name: a fix round after verify, a settle stage when a conflict reaches it, and a merge stage that archives the change (teams.14, teams.17). Those stages stay crew’s. How their prompts take the form of a kind is on Open questions.