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Items and sends

An item is the unit of work: the signals curation joined, one or many. It may be five of a meeting’s ten signals, or two bumps that move together. An item is Flywheel’s proposed intent (109). millpond keeps its signals, its brief, every place it was sent, and the conclusion that settled it when a sounding answered it.

How an item forms

Join, attach and route lead to items, and drop, answered and challenge settle a signal:

A signal's move one per signal Settled drop, answered, challenge An item join, attach, route one signal or many One worktree flume: the brief and an agent crew's planner chores and units across teams sluice lands the work a worktree's landing, written against the item a question A sounding one question, worked to a conclusion accepted: its work, new items
Drop, answered and challenge settle a signal. Join and attach put it on an item, and a route's chore becomes an item of one. The inbox's settings send an item through flume to one worktree or hand it to crew's planner, and sluice lands the work either way. An item that asks a question goes to a sounding, and the work its accepted conclusion proposes comes back as new items.
  • join makes an item from any number of signals, or grows one still proposed.
  • attach puts a signal on an item already sent, so a late signal reaches the work it belongs to.
  • route offers a chore, which millpond makes an item of one, or an ask, which millpond records and makes no item of.

Dropping a proposed item gives each of its signals a move that records the drop, and they are not joined again unless new signals join them (117).

The brief

The brief is the text an item’s work starts from. The curation session writes it with the brief tool, and millpond keeps it on the item. A send hands the brief to flume, the agent starts from it, and the item’s signals point the agent to the source’s own words.

A send

millpond sends one item to one worktree through flume:

  1. The send names the repository and the kind, a fix or an OpenSpec change.
  2. millpond records the send and hands flume the brief.
  3. flume makes the worktree and starts the agent.
  4. The work submits through sluice.
  5. millpond writes the landing against the item, from sluice’s record of that branch.

millpond keeps the item’s record, and flume keeps only the live state of the worktrees it runs. The item shows where it went and that it landed. flume’s book holds the worktree, the kind’s stages and how flume tidies up after the work lands or is dropped.

A question, sent to a sounding

millpond sends an item that asks a question to a sounding: one question, worked by one session in a worktree of its own, ending on one conclusion. The item’s work ends in an answer, such as whether to take a major release, or how to settle what a meeting left open. flume makes the sounding’s worktree and runs it as the kind question. sounding’s book holds how a sounding works.

The operator decides the conclusion. Accepting it settles the item: millpond keeps the conclusion as the item’s record, and each piece of work the conclusion proposes becomes an item of its own, or an entry in crew’s plan. The operator may instead send the sounding back for another round, or drop it with a reason.

A conclusion never becomes a signal. Curation never judges a moved signal again (107), and the operator is never asked the same approval twice (6). An accepted conclusion is the record curation names when it answers a later signal on the same subject (116). Only a finding beyond the question comes back, as a capture the sounding offers (see Sources).

An inbox crew keeps

An inbox crew keeps sends no item to flume itself, and millpond refuses a send from it. Its settings hand items to crew’s planner, which orders them across teams and turns each into a chore or a unit. crew then asks flume for each stage of the work, in a slot of the team’s. Planning across items is crew’s today and Flywheel’s later, never millpond’s.

A release, from capture to landed bump

In a repository crew runs, a bump comes only as a chore crew’s planner makes from an item (inputs.6). The release lands as a capture with its own excerpt, curation routes its signal into an item, the planner proposes the chore, and a team makes the bump, which sluice lands. The bump moves the pin, so headwater’s next scan no longer reports the release (headwater 9). Nobody writes an acknowledgement.