roboco/CLAUDE.md

CLAUDE.md

This file provides guidance to Claude Code (claude.ai/code) when working with code in this repository.

Licensing

RoboCo is licensed under AGPL-3.0 (see LICENSE). Copyright (c) 2026 Renzo Franceschini. Do NOT reintroduce an MIT or other license reference anywhere (README, headers, package metadata) — the project is AGPL.

Contributions require a signed Contributor License Agreement (CLA.md), automated via the CLA Assistant workflow (.github/workflows/cla.yml). The CLA preserves the option to dual-license / offer a commercial edition later; keep copyright assignment language intact. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Project Overview

RoboCo is an AI Agentic Company - a virtual organization of 25 AI agents + 1 human CEO, designed to operate as a complete software development workforce. The system implements a structured organizational hierarchy with formal communication protocols, task management, and quality controls.

Core Architecture

CEO (Renzo - Human)
    |
    +-- Intake (on-demand interviewer: chats only with the CEO to draft a task)
    +-- Secretary (on-demand chief-of-staff: reads company state, runs gated CEO directives)
    +-- PR Reviewer (read-only: the main reviewer — inbound external/fork + internal PRs, and the root→master in-path gate)
    |
    +-- Board (3 agents)
         +-- Product Owner
         +-- Head of Marketing
         +-- Auditor (silent observer, reports to CEO)
              |
              +-- Main PM (coordinates all cells)
                   |
                   +-- Backend Cell (6 agents: 2 Devs, 1 QA, 1 PM, 1 Documenter, 1 PR Reviewer)
                   +-- Frontend Cell (6 agents: 2 Devs, 1 QA, 1 PM, 1 Documenter, 1 PR Reviewer)
                   +-- UX/UI Cell (6 agents: 2 Devs, 1 QA, 1 PM, 1 Documenter, 1 PR Reviewer)

Hardware Infrastructure

• Olares One (Powerhouse): Intel Ultra 9 + RTX 5090, runs Claude Code instances and AI inference - NOT YET ARRIVED
• UGREEN NAS (Warehouse): 36TB RAID6, 128GB RAM, hosts PostgreSQL, Redis
• Pi Cluster (Operations): Monitoring, notifications, smart home

Development Standards

Python (Backend)

# Package manager
uv

# Before any commit
uv run ruff format .
uv run ruff check .
uv run mypy roboco/
uv run pytest

# Coverage target: 80%

TypeScript (Frontend)

# Package manager
pnpm

# Before any commit
pnpm format
pnpm lint
pnpm typecheck
pnpm test

# Coverage target: 80%

Technology Stack

Layer	Technology
API Framework	FastAPI
Database	PostgreSQL + asyncpg
Vector Store	PostgreSQL + pgvector (in-house engine)
RAG Engine	in-house (asyncpg + pgvector, hybrid retrieval)
Cache/Queue	Redis
Container Runtime	Docker + Docker Compose
Cloud LLM	Claude API (claude-opus-5) + xAI Grok (official grok CLI, SuperGrok subscription) + OpenAI (official codex CLI, ChatGPT subscription) + Google Gemini (official gemini CLI, OAuth login)
Local LLM	Ollama (glm-5.2:cloud for RAG/hybrid retrieval)
Embeddings	qwen3-embedding:0.6b (1024 dim)
Frontend	Next.js 16 + TypeScript + Tailwind + Radix UI (in panel/)
Edge / Proxy	nginx (single entry point on port 3000)

Multi-Agent Workspace Structure

Each agent gets their own git clone of a project, enabling parallel development without conflicts:

{ROBOCO_WORKSPACES_ROOT}/          # Default: /data/workspaces
+-- {project-slug}/
    +-- {team}/
        +-- {agent-slug}/
            +-- [git repository]

Example:

/data/workspaces/
+-- roboco/
    +-- backend/
    |   +-- be-dev-1/     # be-dev-1's workspace
    |   +-- be-dev-2/     # be-dev-2's workspace
    +-- frontend/
        +-- fe-dev-1/
        +-- fe-dev-2/

Note: the Next.js control panel now lives at roboco/panel/ inside this repo (no longer a separate roboco-panel project or workspace).

Key Configuration (roboco/config.py):

• ROBOCO_WORKSPACES_ROOT: Root directory for workspaces (default: /data/workspaces)
• ROBOCO_WORKSPACE_AUTO_CLONE: Auto-clone repos on first access (default: true)
• ROBOCO_WORKSPACE_CLONE_TIMEOUT: Clone timeout in seconds (default: 300)

On a Python workspace, WorkspaceService runs uv sync --extra dev (not plain uv sync) so the clone's .venv carries the full gate toolchain (ruff/mypy/xenon/pytest) — the lint/type/complexity tools live in the dev extra, which plain uv sync skips. Without it an agent's make quality fails on ruff: command not found and the agent can't gate its own work.

Because the clone is shared across a dev's tasks, a fresh claim git-resets the workspace to a clean tree (git reset --hard) before checking out the new task's branch — discarding abandoned uncommitted cruft from a finished task while preserving all commits and the gitignored .venv. A resume short-circuits before this, so committed work is never reset.

Terminal completion and cancellation also force-delete the task's local branch ref and its .previews/ video-render dir in the assignee's clone (alongside the existing worktree removal), skipping any branch that coincides with an environment-ladder rung; a PM/CEO can additionally sweep older backlog branches project-wide via POST /git/branches/cleanup or the Git page's "Clean Up Stale Branches" button.

Git Workflow

Branch Naming Convention

Branch names follow the pattern: {type}/{team}/{task-hierarchy}

Types: feature, bug, chore, docs, hotfix

Task Hierarchy: Uses -- separator (not /) to avoid git ref conflicts.

Examples:

• Root task: feature/backend/ABC12345
• Subtask: feature/backend/ABC12345--DEF67890
• Sub-subtask: feature/backend/ABC12345--DEF67890--GHI11111

Commit Format

Commits are automatically prefixed with the task ID:

[{task-id[:8]}] {message}

Example:

[ABC12345] Add user authentication endpoint

Work Sessions

When a developer claims a task, a WorkSession is created that tracks:

• Branch name and base/target branches
• All commits made during the session
• Files modified
• PR number/URL when created
• Merge status and who merged

A task has at most one active WorkSession: re-claiming a task (pool release, reaper unclaim, escalation redirect) supersedes any prior agent's stale active session, enforced both at the service layer and by a DB partial-unique index (migration 047). Without it, duplicate active sessions made the one-row active lookup raise and crashed the claim/plan flow into a respawn loop.

A developer's clone is shared across all their tasks, so push and PR-head operate on the task's recorded branch by name, independent of the clone's current checkout — fixing the BRANCH_MISMATCH / "No commits between" failures when the clone was parked on a later task's branch. A missing local task-branch ref is first recovered from origin/<branch> before the push-by-name.

Stale-state family fixes (2026-07-24, #683/#690/#692). Three independent chokepoints used to trust whatever a clone/worktree happened to have on disk instead of checking origin, all closed the same week off one live incident: GitService.rebase_onto_base no longer opens with an unconditional reset --hard origin/<head_branch> (#683) — it classifies local vs origin post-fetch first, so a committed-but-unpushed dev tip (routine mid-rework, since commit never pushes) is never silently discarded, and a genuine two-sided divergence returns {"status": "diverged", ...} untouched rather than guessing a side to keep. The reader-side twin, GitService._resolve_head_ref (backing diff/list_changed_files/read_file_at_branch/roboco_git_log), now prefers origin/<branch> over a local ref whenever origin carries commits the local ref lacks (#690) — a QA/PM/reviewer clone parked on pre-rebase history no longer stays frozen there across every later review round. And WorkspaceService.ensure_worktree_self_heal stops treating an ALREADY-PRESENT per-task worktree as a pure venv+chown no-op (#692): every spawn now runs it through _refresh_present_worktree, role-aware via can_author (foundation.identity.WORKTREE_AUTHOR_ROLES) — fast-forward when behind for every role without ever discarding an author's dirty uncommitted edits, leave alone when strictly ahead, hard-reset only for a non-author reader when diverged. Together these close the "reviewer keeps bouncing a task back for fixes that already landed, because it's still looking at its own frozen round-1 checkout" incident class.

Git Credentials

Git authentication is managed per-project through encrypted GitHub PATs:

• Each project stores its own git token - no global fallback
• Tokens are encrypted at rest using Fernet symmetric encryption
• API never exposes tokens - only returns has_git_token: boolean
• Self-service via UI - users set/update tokens in project settings

Project fields:

Field	Description
git_token_encrypted	Fernet-encrypted GitHub PAT (DB column)
has_git_token	Boolean indicator for API responses

Token flow:

1. User creates project in UI, enters GitHub PAT
2. Token encrypted and stored in projects.git_token_encrypted
3. WorkspaceService decrypts token when cloning repos
4. GitService decrypts token for PR operations (gh CLI)

HTTPS URLs require tokens - attempting to clone without a token will raise WorkspaceError.

Forge providers (GitHub + Gitea + GitLab)

The REST surface (PRs, CI status, reviews, labels, releases) is provider-routed (roboco/services/forge/): GitProvider is the ~20-method transport contract, GitHubProvider, GiteaProvider, and GitLabProvider implement it, and GitService._forge returns a ForgeRouter that picks the transport per call from RepoRef.host — None (github.com/GHE) rides GitHub, a registered Gitea/GitLab host rides that instance's provider, so GitService's call sites never know which forge they're on. A project opts in via projects.git_provider (gitlab.com auto-detects like github.com; self-hosted instances set it explicitly; "github" doubles as the GHE escape hatch with ROBOCO_GITHUB_API_BASE_URL) — panel: the Forge select on the project settings page's identity card (/projects/[id]/settings, Wave C — was the edit-project dialog, now deleted). The host→provider(+scheme — plain-http LAN instances are supported) map is in-memory per process, self-healing: ProjectService.get/get_by_slug re-register on every read. Both non-GitHub providers adapt their wire contracts back into the GitHub shapes GitService classifies (forge/shaping.py ShapedResponse): Gitea — token auth scheme, duplicate-PR 409→422, commit statuses reshaped into check_runs/workflow_runs, Do-keyed POST merge, slash-encoded refs; GitLab — MR iid→number, source/target_branch→head/base, per-file diffs reassembled into unified-diff text, approve-vs-note review routing (no request-changes verb exists), pipelines/statuses CI reshapes, reviewer-request skipped (needs numeric ids). Neither has GitHub's server-side merges API: their merge_branch returns a shaped 501 and GitService.sync_env_branch runs the shared local-git fallback (_local_merge_branch: throwaway clone → merge → push; conflict aborts with the remote untouched, same status vocabulary). Plain git (clone/fetch/push) is forge-agnostic — the Basic-auth x-access-token:<token> extraheader works on Gitea/GitLab unchanged (verified live on Gitea). The env-gated tests/e2e_smoke/test_gitea_live.py is the live contract suite (self-seeding against a dockerized gitea/gitea; it caught the slash-encoding and http-scheme gaps).

Protected Branches

projects.protected_branches (operator-declared, panel: a chips editor on the project settings page's placement card) is unioned — never replacing, only tightening — into GitService's hardcoded safety floor. Two scopes, deliberately different: _protected_branches_for (rebase refusal + sync_task_branch's force-push refusal) is the field alone unioned with the hardcoded {master, main} floor and fails OPEN on a lookup error (a wrongly-blocked rebase over a transient DB blip is the worse tradeoff, and a skipped rebase gets no free retry); _protected_branches_for_deletion — consulted ONLY by the shared _delete_remote_branch_best_effort chokepoint every remote-delete path routes through (task-branch cleanup on cancel, the stale-branch sweep, and post-merge PR-source cleanup) — additionally unions in the project's environment-ladder rung branches (effective_environments, so a null ladder's synthesized single rung off default_branch is protected too, e.g. a renamed trunk like trunk) and fails CLOSED on a lookup error (skip the delete entirely; deletion is best-effort so a skipped one just retries at the next sweep, whereas silently proceeding on an unresolvable project could delete a real declared rung for good). Matching is exact and case-sensitive; an empty protected_branches list degrades to exactly the prior hardcoded-only behavior.

Task Lifecycle

Task States

The complete task lifecycle is defined in roboco/foundation/policy/lifecycle.py (roboco/enforcement/task_lifecycle.py is a backwards-compat shim over it):

backlog -> pending -> claimed -> in_progress -> [blocked|paused] -> verifying
                                     |                                  |
                                     v                                  v
                                 awaiting_qa <------------------+   awaiting_documentation
                                     |         (needs_revision) |           |
                                     v                          |           v
                                 awaiting_documentation --------+   awaiting_pm_review
                                     |                                      |
                                     v                                      v
                                 awaiting_pm_review             awaiting_ceo_approval
                                     |                                      |
                                     v                                      v
                                 completed                              completed

In-path PR-review gate (awaiting_pr_review): each assembled PR is reviewed before the PM merges. The cell PM's submit_up opens the cell→root PR and the Main PM's submit_root opens the root→master PR; both enter awaiting_pr_review, where a reviewer pr_passes it on to awaiting_pm_review or pr_fails it back to needs_revision — the merge-level reject the PM otherwise lacks. Leaf dev tasks and branchless coordination roots skip the gate. pr_pass additionally refuses while the assembled PR's own CI (its head commit's checks, GitService.get_pr_ci_status) is failing, pending, or unresolvable — a repo with no CI configured passes through with an evidence note; pr_fail stays available regardless so a reviewer is never stuck waiting on CI. The reviewer prompt requires a per-AC file:line walk (a silently dropped deliverable is an automatic fail) and the gate's diff/conventions base resolves the task's REAL parent branch (resolve_parent_branch, the parent task's own branch_name) instead of deriving it from the branch-name string, so a cross-team hop (e.g. cell→root) no longer attributes inherited base-branch content to the task under review.

Sequence is the bar. A task with a parent and effective sequence N (COALESCE(sequence, 0)) cannot be claimed while any same-parent sibling with a strictly lower effective sequence is non-terminal — assignee-blind and, for MegaTask batch root-subtasks, independent of and stricter than dependency_ids (every other same-parent context is reachability-aware — see the sequence-drift fix below), enforced in TaskService._validate_claim_preconditions (the claim chokepoint itself) so every claim path crosses it. Ties run parallel; cancelled siblings never block; sequence 0 and parentless tasks are unaffected. Delegation stamps sequence from the collision DAG (stamp_wave_sequence: 1 + max same-parent dependency sequence, or 0 when independent) instead of a raw per-sibling ordinal, so fully independent siblings tie and run in parallel while colliding/ordered work ascends — PM-authored sequences are never rewritten. tasks.parent_task_id is indexed (migration 069) since the guard's sibling probe runs on every claim; the dispatcher pre-filters dependency/sequence-held tasks (TaskService.is_pending_claim_blocked) before attempting a doomed claim.

Sequence-drift fix (2026-07-24): the bar is reachability-aware outside MegaTask batches. stamp_wave_sequence stamps each new sibling's wave from a partial, per-task view of the graph at delegate time — fine within one connected chain, but two INDEPENDENT dev-task streams under the same parent (unconnected, stamp_wave_sequenced incrementally over time) can land on the same raw sequence number by coincidence, and the old edge-agnostic bar phantom-held a wave-N sibling behind a totally unrelated wave-(N-1) sibling from a different stream. _claim_blocked_by_sequence now branches on is_batch_root_subtask(task.batch_id, task.parent_task_id): a MegaTask root-subtask (whose sequence is a one-shot, globally-computed Kahn wave index from PrompterService._build_confirm_batch — a deliberate staged-release barrier) keeps the original strict, edge-agnostic rule unchanged; every other same-parent context routes through the pure sequence_blocker_id (roboco/services/sequencing.py), which only lets a lower-sequence candidate block when it's a real (transitive) predecessor via dependency_ids UNIONED with completed_dependency_ids (the union matters — _unblock_dependents prunes a completed dependency's edge into completed_dependency_ids the moment it lands, almost always before the dependent is ever claimed) — a task with NO dependency edge onto any same-parent sibling at all still falls back to the original raw bar unchanged (preserves the #452 edge-less-PM-delegation scenario exactly). The hold also now surfaces cleanly: TaskService.sequence_hold_reason + a proactive _sequencing_claim_guard in the gateway's _run_claim_guards return a dedicated Envelope.sequence_held (naming the blocker) on both the PENDING and NEEDS_REVISION reclaim paths, instead of claim()'s bare None return reaching the verb runner and getting misdiagnosed as a "concurrent transition" invalid_state. give_me_work's two offer paths (TaskService.list_pending_for_agent and the Choreographer's _drop_dependency_held over list_assigned_for_agent) both now also consult the sequence bar (the latter via is_pending_claim_blocked, extended to NEEDS_REVISION) so the dispatcher never offers a task the claim gate is about to reject.

PM-turn elimination (auto-submit). When every child of an assembled, PR-bearing parent goes terminal, the orchestrator's closure dispatcher (_maybe_spawn_pm_closure → _closure_handled_without_pm → _try_auto_submit) runs the real submit_up/submit_root gate system-side as the owning PM instead of spawning the PM for that turn — same verb, same guards (ownership, notes, journal:decision, subtasks-terminal, parent-AC coverage, branch), authorized via the internal API with the PM's own identity headers. This is unconditional — the turn cut IS the flow, no kill-switch. Success lands the task on awaiting_pr_review with an audited task.auto_submitted row and no PM spawn; ANY refusal (branchless/umbrella parent, a gate rejection — freshness, AC coverage, a subtask-terminal race — or a transport error) falls back to spawning the PM exactly as before — that fallback is the sole safety net — with the refusal reason threaded into the PM's closure prompt so it isn't rediscovering it blind.

Revision findings ledger (always-on, no flag — core lifecycle). QA/PR-gate/PM/CEO bounce feedback used to be prose-only: issues: list[str] flattened into free text with no structural anchor, request_changes/ceo_reject had no structured note at all, and the raw dev_notes append both used was silently overwritten by the very next note(scope='handoff') call — a live data-loss bug. fail_review (QA), pr_fail (in-path PR gate), request_changes (PM merge reject), and ceo_reject all now take structured findings: list[dict] — validated into Finding (file repo-relative ≤300 chars/no .., line ≥1, severity blocker|major|minor|nit, criterion must match an AC id or its exact text, expected/actual ≤300, fix ≤500, evidence ≤2000) — with a soft nudge above 5 findings and a hard reject above 10 in one call (roboco/services/gateway/choreographer/findings.py). issues=[...] still works this release as a shim (each string → a file-less severity=major finding, deprecation-logged) and merges with findings rather than one silently dropping the other. Every producer inserts one append-only row per finding into task_review_findings (migration 071; origin qa|pr_gate|pm|ceo, round = revision_count+1 read pre-transition, status open→addressed→verified|waived) via ReviewFindingsRepository, then writes a structured note whose summary IS the deterministic per-finding rendering [F-id8] file:line (severity) — expected → actual → fix, mirrored into qa_notes/pr_reviewer_notes/the new pm_notes column (new PmReviewContent "pm_review" content type). ceo_reject now validates its reason (previously could 500 on an empty/trivial one) and stamps it as one origin=ceo blocker finding; on a branchless coordination root — which routes to pending via admin_set_status, bypassing the normal audit chokepoint — it bumps revision_count and emits task.ceo_reject directly instead of silently skipping both. New audit events task.request_changes/task.ceo_reject join task.qa_fail/task.pr_fail in _audit_events_for so rework metrics attribute every bounce kind, not just QA/PR-gate.

Resolution: i_am_done/submit_up/submit_root all gain resolved_findings ({finding_id, commit?, note?}), gated by a new Requirement.FINDINGS_ADDRESSED — every OPEN finding on the task must be named (a fuzzy 8-char-prefix match against [F-id8]) or the envelope rejects, listing the still-open ids. pass_review/pr_pass/complete bulk-verify their own origin's addressed findings same-transaction (a stamp failure fails the verb outright, not best-effort); ceo_approve stamps ceo-origin best-effort. mark_waived is wired to the auditor-only waive_finding flow verb (severity-scoped: blocker/major must be fixed, never waived; only minor/nit open findings are waivable, with a required note and a task.finding_waived audit event; no task status change).

Delivery: evidence()/build_task_handoff carry revision_findings (open only, capped) so a bounced dev finally gets what developer.md promises instead of nothing; claim_review/claim_gate_review additionally carry prior_findings (the full ledger) so a round-2+ reviewer checks prior findings instead of re-deriving them blind. The orchestrator's REVISION_REQUIRED dev prompt and the PM triage "bounced" block render open findings inline with the same rendering; A2A fail bodies share it. GET /api/tasks/{id}/findings (capped 500, SQL-aggregated per-origin/status summary + total/truncated) backs the panel's task-detail Findings tab and a bounced xN header chip (revision_count); metrics attribute pm_rejects/ceo_rejects + open/total findings counts per task; vault task notes render a capped ## Findings section (fail-open fetch, never blocks the note write).

States:

State	Description
backlog	PM setup phase - dependencies or session setup needed
pending	Ready for work - orchestrator can spawn agents
claimed	Agent has locked the task
in_progress	Active development
blocked	External dependency blocking progress
paused	Temporarily stopped (can resume)
verifying	Self-verification by developer
needs_revision	QA or CEO requested changes
awaiting_qa	Submitted for QA review — PR must already exist
awaiting_documentation	Documentation phase — PR already open from pre-QA; doc writes docs
awaiting_pr_review	In-path PR-review gate: a reviewer checks the assembled cell→root / root→master PR before the PM merges (assembled, PR-bearing tasks only)
awaiting_pm_review	Docs complete, PM reviews + merges
awaiting_ceo_approval	Major tasks escalated for CEO final approval
completed	Terminal state - work done and merged
cancelled	Terminal state - work cancelled

Role-Based Transitions

All status transitions are validated through the enforcement layer. Key restrictions:

Transition	Allowed Roles
backlog → pending (activate)	PM roles only
pending → claimed (claim)	Role must match task type (QA for awaiting_qa, etc.)
claimed → pending (unclaim)	Assignee or PM
awaiting_qa → awaiting_documentation (pass)	QA only
awaiting_qa → needs_revision (fail)	QA only
awaiting_documentation → awaiting_pm_review	Documenter or Developer (parallel completion)
in_progress → awaiting_pr_review (submit_up / submit_root)	PM roles (opens the assembled cell→root / root→master PR) — or the orchestrator running the same verb system-side as the owning PM once all children are terminal
awaiting_pr_review → awaiting_pm_review (pr_pass)	PR reviewer only
awaiting_pr_review → needs_revision (pr_fail)	PR reviewer only
awaiting_pm_review → completed	PM roles only
awaiting_pm_review → needs_revision (request_changes)	PM roles only — the merge-level reject with structured findings (see "Revision findings ledger" above)
awaiting_pm_review → awaiting_ceo_approval	PM roles only
awaiting_ceo_approval → completed/needs_revision/cancelled	CEO only
Any → cancelled	PM roles only

Unclaim Operation: Agents can release claimed tasks back to the pool using unclaim(). This transitions claimed → pending and optionally reassigns to another agent.

Board never owns a coordination root: a Board role (Product Owner / Head of Marketing) is never assigned a Main-PM coordination root (delivery root or MegaTask root-subtask) via escalation or reassignment — Board roles have no unblock verb, so such a hand-off would deadlock. The transition is diverted to the pool for a role-matched Main-PM reclaim.

Git Integration Requirements

All tasks follow git workflow. PR is created BEFORE QA review (not after) so QA can review the real PR diff on GitHub and downstream PM/CEO approval chain off a PR that already exists:

1. claimed -> in_progress: branch_name is auto-set on claim (hierarchical branches)
2. verifying -> awaiting_qa (submit-qa): Requires self_verified, commits, pr_number (PR open), and at least one progress_updates entry
3. awaiting_qa -> awaiting_documentation (pass-qa): Requires pr_number and substantive QA notes
4. awaiting_documentation -> awaiting_pm_review: Requires docs_complete=True (PR already exists from step 2 above)
5. awaiting_pm_review -> awaiting_ceo_approval: Must have pr_number set and all subtasks in a terminal state

CEO Approval Workflow

Major tasks are escalated to CEO for final approval:

1. PM reviews and approves, escalates to awaiting_ceo_approval
2. CEO can:
   • Approve: Merges PR, task -> completed
   • Request changes: Task -> needs_revision
   • Cancel: Task -> cancelled

Data Models

Core Models (roboco/models/)

Model	Purpose
Task	Atomic unit of work with acceptance criteria
Project	Git repository configuration and CI/CD commands
WorkSession	Links agent work to task, tracks branch/commits/PR
Agent	AI agent with role, team, capabilities
Notification	Formal notification requiring acknowledgment
Journal	Agent personal log for reflections/learnings

Task Model Key Fields

# Git configuration (all tasks follow git workflow)
task_type: TaskType      # code, documentation, research, planning, design, administrative
project_id: UUID         # Project this task works on (required)
branch_name: str         # Branch for this task (auto-created on claim)
work_session_id: UUID    # Active work session

# PR tracking (parallel execution in awaiting_documentation)
pr_number: int           # GitHub/GitLab PR number
pr_url: str              # Full URL to PR
docs_complete: bool      # Documenter has finished
pr_created: bool         # Developer has created PR

# Commits linked to task
commits: list[CommitRef] # All commits made for this task

Communication Model

Agents coordinate via task state + task detail fields, not a channel/session backbone. Two comms primitives sit alongside that: A2A (dm + read_a2a, direct peer-to-peer, same-cell only — see docs/rag/tools/a2a-tools.md) for informal contact, and Notifications (notify, ack-required, sent by PMs/Board only) for formal signals. The CEO is the one asymmetric participant: from the panel it can open a direct 1:1 A2A conversation with any DM-capable agent at any time, but an agent can never initiate to the CEO — only reply in-thread once the CEO has opened one. A CEO-authored DM wakes an offline recipient via the a2a_request notification dispatch path, a wake same-cell dm never triggers.

Agent learnings (note scope='learning') broadcast as knowledge-share notifications only to other agents — the human / human-driven roles (CEO, prompter, secretary) are excluded, since agent knowledge-sharing is noise in a human's inbox.

Notification re-escalation backoff (always-on). sweep_expired_notifications (roboco/services/notification_delivery.py) re-escalates a still-unacked ack-required notification past its expires_at to the recipient's up-role (the PM's PM, or the CEO) — but only when a per-notification backoff schedule says it's due, not on every ~60s sweep tick forever. Each row carries reescalation_count / last_reescalated_at / reescalation_delivered_count (migration 079): the first re-escalation fires at expiry, each one after that doubles the wait from ROBOCO_NOTIFICATION_REESCALATION_BASE_SECONDS (default 1h, capped at 24h), and past ROBOCO_NOTIFICATION_MAX_REESCALATIONS (default 5) the row is logged once as permanently-unacked and left alone for good — the due/wait/capped decision is a pure function (reescalation_decision, roboco/foundation/policy/communications.py). The attempt slot is claimed by a compare-and-set UPDATE ... WHERE reescalation_count = :n BEFORE any delivery is attempted (the 60s dedup guard elsewhere does NOT backstop this — BLOCKER_ESCALATION, the type every re-escalation fires as, is excluded from the loop-prone dedup set), so two sweep ticks racing the same row can never both deliver. Legacy rows read as count=0 and keep the original first-fire semantics.

Key Principles

1. Everything is a task - All work is tracked and documented
2. No work without a task - Create task record first
3. No task without acceptance criteria - How do we know it's done?
4. No closure without documentation - Future agents need context
5. Communication is constant - Stream reasoning, log everything
6. State is sacred - If interrupted, state must be recoverable
7. The Auditor sees all - Quality monitored silently
8. Commits linked to tasks - Every commit references its task ID
9. CEO approves major changes - Escalation path for important work

Agent Gateway

Agents do not call the API or per-domain MCP tools directly. They go through two thin MCP servers (roboco-flow, roboco-do) backed by the server-side Choreographer in roboco/services/gateway/. The Choreographer composes the existing services (TaskService, JournalService, GitService, etc.) into intent-verb sequences. Tracing, claim-locking, evidence assembly, and remediation hints are all centralized there.

Each agent gets a spawn manifest at /app/tool-manifest.json listing the verbs its role is allowed to call. The orchestrator builds the manifest from roboco/services/gateway/role_config.py and mounts it read-only into the agent container.

Verb surface (canonical source: lifecycle.intents_for_role; every role also gets i_am_idle)

Role	Flow verbs (beyond i_am_idle)
developer	give_me_work, i_will_work_on, open_pr, i_am_done, i_am_blocked, resume, sync_branch, unclaim
qa	give_me_work, claim_review, pass_review, fail_review, i_am_blocked, resume, unclaim
documenter	give_me_work, claim_doc_task, i_documented, i_am_blocked, resume, unclaim
cell_pm	give_me_work, i_will_plan, delegate, complete, request_changes, submit_up, triage, unblock, escalate_up, reassign, resume, unclaim
main_pm	give_me_work, i_will_plan, delegate, complete, request_changes, submit_root, triage, triage_all, unblock, escalate_up, escalate_to_ceo, resume, unclaim
pr_reviewer	give_me_work, claim_pr_review, post_pr_review (inbound external/fork PRs), claim_gate_review, pr_pass, pr_fail (in-path assembled-PR gate), unclaim
product_owner	triage, escalate_to_ceo
head_marketing	triage, escalate_to_ceo
auditor	triage, waive_finding (read-only; carries dm/read_a2a as a content tool so it can reply to a CEO-opened DM, but never initiates)
prompter	(none beyond i_am_idle — not a delivery-lifecycle role; intake interviewer, human-only)
secretary	(none beyond i_am_idle — human-only chief-of-staff; reads company state + runs gated CEO directives)

Content tools (do_server) — most roles: commit, note, dm, read_a2a, evidence. Delivery roles (developer / qa / documenter / cell_pm / main_pm) also get draft_playbook (draft a curated playbook for the KB). Product Owner additionally gets five Board Program proposal verbs, all product_owner-only: propose_roadmap (Printer, the weekly roadmap cycle), propose_bug_hunt (Pest Control), propose_gap_fill (Spackle), propose_rebalance (Scales), propose_friction_fixes (Dogfood). Head of Marketing additionally gets six, all head_marketing-only: propose_feature_spotlight (spotlight), propose_market_brief (Periscope), propose_messaging_fixes (Mirror), propose_editorial_post (Megaphone), propose_campaign (War Room), propose_conversation_replies (Barfly). Both Board roles also carry pitch — see "Board Program registry" / "RoboCo X account" below. Auditor is restricted to note (scope=reflect) + evidence + dm/read_a2a, plus the playbook-curation verbs approve_playbook / reject_playbook / archive_playbook (a bounded, deliberate expansion — KB curation, not agent comms), two more Board Program proposal verbs auditor-only — propose_quality_report (Sentinel) and propose_playbook_drafts (Librarian, drafting straight via PlaybookService rather than draft_playbook, which the Auditor still never carries) — plus propose_postmortem (Coroner, event-triggered, no cron) and, when the Obsidian vault is armed, curate_vault (writes one narrative paragraph onto a just-completed root's vault note — see "Obsidian vault V1+V2" below). The auditor's dm/read_a2a exists so it can read and reply in-thread when the CEO opens a DM with it (mid-task, stuck) — it still never initiates peer A2A (agents_config.can_a2a_direct refuses it unconditionally as sender), preserving it as a silent observer to other agents. The pr_reviewer likewise now carries dm/read_a2a for the same CEO-reachability reason, on top of posting its change-request on the PR itself; its only INITIATION target stays its owning cell_pm/main_pm. The prompter (intake) and secretary are restricted to note + evidence — human-only, no dm/notify, they have their own dedicated chat pages instead. The note/journal write returns as soon as the entry is persisted; RAG indexing (Ollama embedding) runs fire-and-forget, so the tool no longer times out under concurrent load.

MCP servers running per agent container

Server	Purpose
roboco-flow	Intent verbs (give_me_work, i_am_done, claim_review, complete, ...)
roboco-do	Content tools (commit, note, dm, read_a2a, evidence)
roboco-git-readonly	Read-only git: status, log, diff, branches
roboco-optimal	RAG: roboco_ask_mentor, roboco_kb_search
roboco-docs	Project docs file management (selected roles)
playwright	Structured browser tools (navigate/snapshot/evaluate/screenshot) — fe-qa/ux-qa role-gated, plus the Product Owner's Dogfood (board_dogfood) spawns task-scoped only (AgentOrchestrator._is_dogfood_spawn, not a blanket product_owner grant); not image-gated, the wrapper entrypoint points it at the image's own baked chromium-headless-shell

Every verb returns a standardized Envelope:

• ok: {status, task_id, next, evidence?, context_briefing}
• error: {error, message, remediate, missing}

The next field tells the agent what to call next; the remediate field on errors tells them exactly how to fix and retry. Agents should not guess state — trust the response. The verb runner re-checks the task after each composed atomic action and, on a concurrent mid-verb state change, fails fast with a clean INVALID_STATE (re-fetch + re-issue) rather than crashing on a None dereference.

Agent Providers

Agent backends are pluggable. roboco/llm/providers/ defines an AgentProvider lifecycle ABC (base.py) and a ProviderRegistry keyed by ModelProvider (registry.py), with ClaudeCodeProvider (default), GrokCliProvider, GeminiCliProvider, and CodexCliProvider. The orchestrator resolves a provider at spawn from the agent's ModelProvider; when no dedicated provider is registered it falls back to the built-in Claude Code spawn. ModelProvider (roboco/models/base.py) is ANTHROPIC (default), GROK, GEMINI, OPENAI, LOCAL, OLLAMA_CLOUD — OPENAI routes through the official Codex CLI on a ChatGPT subscription (CodexCliProvider), not a reserved/unimplemented value. The seam is additive: only GROK/GEMINI/OPENAI route through their dedicated providers; Anthropic / Ollama Cloud / self-hosted spawns are unchanged, and every provider gets the same MCP gateway + tool-manifest wiring by construction.

Cost-tiered routing + routing presets. ModelRoutingService (roboco/services/llm.py) resolves (provider, model) per agent at spawn from model_assignments with precedence AGENT_SLUG > ROLE(:complexity) > ROLE > GLOBAL; the compound ROLE:complexity rung (e.g. developer:low) reuses the existing ROLE scope + scope_value column — no schema change — to pin a role to a cheaper model at a given task's estimated_complexity without touching the plain ROLE row everything else still uses. apply_mode('cost_tiered') additively seeds _COST_TIERED_SEED, unlike every other mode's wipe-then-seed; the seed is now an empty tuple (see "haiku retired from delivery-lifecycle roles" below) — the mode stays wired for a future above-floor re-seed, it just ships inert. On top of modes, routing presets (RoutingPresetTable) let an operator name-and-snapshot the FULL current routing state (mode + every assignment row, AGENT_SLUG pins included) via save_routing_preset, then restore it wholesale later with apply_routing_preset — a full swap, validate-every-entry-first so an invalid payload never triggers the wipe, unlike a mode's pin-preserving behavior. Panel: the AI routing settings card (ai-routing-card.tsx) exposes preset save/apply/delete alongside the existing mode buttons and the complexity-override editor.

Haiku retired from delivery-lifecycle roles (2026-07-24). Haiku can't reliably emit the structured envelopes the lifecycle now runs on — pass_review's per-AC criteria_verified, delegate's covers_parent_criteria, the findings ledger — so a haiku QA/PM claims, gets validation-rejected, idles, respawns, and loops without progress (a live incident: an fe-qa on haiku looped four awaiting_qa tasks to zero progress). ROLE_MODEL_MAP's qa/documenter defaults move from haiku to sonnet; the cost_tiered seed's developer:low → haiku entry retires to empty (the floor below would upgrade it anyway); and a structured-verb capability floor (_below_capability_floor/_floor_below_capability, roboco/services/llm.py) upgrades ANY below-floor Anthropic assignment to sonnet at resolution — from a pin, a ROLE row, or a future map edit — in both the assignment and legacy paths. Non-Anthropic providers are untouched (an Anthropic-tier floor, not a provider policy); pr_reviewer/auditor stay on opus.

Grok runtime. GROK agents run xAI's official grok CLI (model grok-build) authenticated by a SuperGrok subscription, not a metered API key — so a Grok workforce can't stall mid-task on out-of-credits. The host ~/.grok/auth.json is mounted read-only into each agent (GrokCliProvider._append_grok_auth_mount; ROBOCO_HOST_GROK_DIR is the host mount source, set up once with grok login). It reaches parity with the Claude path by construction: same MCP gateway + manifest, per-role tool-removal and git-operation deny rules, a prompt-injection guard on the task prompt, headless tool auto-approval, and per-agent token/cost capture from the grok session store. It covers both one-shot delivery roles and the interactive Intake (Prompter) and Secretary chats (per-turn grok -p with session resume).

Token auto-refresh. The grok access token has a fixed ~6h server-set TTL and the CLI cannot refresh it headlessly — on an expired token it hangs forever at an interactive login prompt. The orchestrator mints a fresh token from the offline-access refresh token (xAI's OIDC refresh_token grant) before expiry and rewrites the shared auth.json in place (roboco/llm/providers/grok_auth.py refresh_if_stale, run once per dispatch tick; the orchestrator's ~/.grok mount is read-write so it can rewrite it). As a backstop the agent entrypoint runs python -m roboco.llm.providers.grok_auth --check and refuses to start (exit 78) on a missing/expired token instead of hanging.

Gemini runtime (V1: one-shot delivery roles only, no interactive Intake/Secretary). GEMINI agents run Google's official gemini CLI (GA ids gemini-2.5-pro/-flash/-flash-lite, pinned via ROBOCO_GEMINI_CLI_MODEL) authenticated by an OAuth login, not a metered key. The host ~/.gemini (from a one-time interactive gemini login, ROBOCO_HOST_GEMINI_DIR) is mounted read-only at a staging path; the entrypoint COPIES it into a container-local, writable ~/.gemini so the CLI's own in-process token refresh (google-auth-library) can write back locally without ever touching the host copy. Unlike grok's single-use refresh token (which needs one orchestrator-side writer serializing every refresh, grok_auth.py), Google's refresh token is reusable, so each container refreshing its own copy independently is safe with no orchestrator refresh daemon — roboco/llm/providers/gemini.py's module docstring spells out the contrast. Tool scoping has no CLI-flag equivalent to grok's --disallowed-tools/--deny: it's expressed entirely through a rendered TOML Policy Engine (~/.gemini/policies/roboco.toml, deny-only rules keyed by toolName/commandPrefix) plus settings.json (security.auth.selectedType for headless OAuth, experimental.enableAgents=false for the fleet-wide subagent ban, advanced.autoConfigureMemory=false), all rendered by roboco/llm/providers/gemini_cli_config.py; --approval-mode yolo is universal (headless auto-approval). Usage/cost capture (gemini_cli_usage.py) reads the run's own --output-format stream-json terminal result event for per-model token stats — no session-file scraping — and prices each of the three GA models at its own rate before flattening to the grok-shaped usage.json; the same module also remaps a quota/rate-limit error (no dedicated CLI exit code — parsed from the run's JSON error.type) to exit 75, while exit 41 (the CLI's own auth-failure code) passes straight through, so the orchestrator parks the GEMINI provider on either exactly like it does for grok's exit-75/78.

Codex runtime (V1: one-shot delivery roles only, no interactive Intake/Secretary). OPENAI agents run OpenAI's official codex CLI (model pinned via ROBOCO_CODEX_CLI_MODEL, default gpt-5.3-codex — codex has no reliable default) authenticated by a ChatGPT subscription, not a metered API key. The host ~/.codex (from a one-time codex login, ROBOCO_HOST_CODEX_DIR) is mounted read-only as a DIRECTORY, not a single auth.json file — a single-file bind mount pins the inode, so the orchestrator's atomic tmp+rename refresh would never reach a running container, the same concern grok's mount documents; the entrypoint symlinks ~/.codex/auth.json to the RO mount while codex's own writable state (config.toml, rules/, sessions/) lives in the image's own ~/.codex. roboco/llm/providers/codex_auth.py runs the orchestrator-side refresh loop (refresh_if_stale, mirroring grok_auth.py): the access token is a JWT whose exp claim is the only expiry signal (unlike grok's bundle there's no sibling expires_at field), and the refresh-token grant against auth.openai.com/oauth/token is single-use, guarded by the same process-wide lock + re-check-inside-the-lock pattern that protects grok's rotation from a concurrent double-burn. Tool scoping has no CLI-flag equivalent to grok's --disallowed-tools: a per-role --sandbox level (workspace-write for developer, read-only for every other role) plus one shared ~/.codex/rules/default.rules execpolicy file (Starlark prefix_rules denying git-mutation/destructive/raw-package-manager commands, rendered by roboco/llm/providers/codex_cli_config.py) do the job instead; the CLI has no verified system-prompt-file mechanism, so the composed role blueprint is prepended to the task prompt itself rather than mounted separately. Codex has no exit-code taxonomy (every failure exits 1), so codex_cli_sniff.py classifies a run's terminal state (rate_limit/auth/none) from ONLY the structured error.message field of its JSONL events plus stderr — never the model's own transcript, which could false-positive on ordinary on-topic prose (this repo's own prompts use the phrase "quota-limited"). Usage capture (codex_cli_usage.py) sums turn.completed events' real input/output/cache-read/cache-write split — a genuine four-bucket split, unlike grok's output-only fallback — into the grok-shaped usage.json.

Self-Healing & Feature Flags

Self-healing CI loop (default-off). RoboCo can watch its own repository's CI (a single named workflow) and, on a detected regression, open a fix task that is held out of dispatch until the CEO approves it (it terminates at awaiting_ceo_approval), then dispatch it through the normal delivery flow. It is dormant by default and armed by ROBOCO_SELF_HEAL_ENABLED plus a second opt-in ROBOCO_SELF_HEAL_ORIGINATE_ENABLED; origination is bounded by ROBOCO_SELF_HEAL_MAX_OPEN_TASKS / _MAX_PER_CYCLE so it can't flood the backlog. It never auto-merges or self-deploys (roboco/services/self_heal_engine.py).

Multi-repo CI-watch (default-off). The fan-out generalization of self-heal: instead of RoboCo's single own repo, it watches every project the operator opts into (projects.ci_watch_enabled, migration 048) and, on a red CI conclusion on that project's default branch, opens one fix task into that project's lifecycle that rides the normal delivery flow (+ PR-review gate) and never auto-merges. It reuses the exact hardened per-project GitService.get_latest_ci_conclusion (a missing signal is "unknown", never a false green; per-project errors are isolated and never abort the sweep), and is bounded + deduped per repo by git_url (a monorepo's cell-projects share one fix task) with per-cycle / rolling caps. Armed by ROBOCO_CI_WATCH_ENABLED (+ _INTERVAL_SECONDS / _MAX_OPEN_TASKS / _MAX_PER_CYCLE / _DEFAULT_WORKFLOW) and per-project ci_watch_enabled / ci_watch_workflow; MultiProjectCITelemetrySource (roboco/services/telemetry/source.py) + CiWatchEngine (roboco/services/ci_watch_engine.py) + a dedicated orchestrator _ci_watch_loop. The single-repo self-heal loop is untouched.

Dependency-update bot (default-off). A per-project engine mirroring the self-heal/CI-watch shape: weekly (default) it probes whether a dependency upgrade would change a project's lockfiles and, if so, opens one "update dependencies" task that rides the normal delivery flow (+ PR-review gate) and never auto-merges. Detection is read-only — WorkspaceService.dry_upgrade_changes_lockfile runs the project's dep_update_command (e.g. uv lock --upgrade) in a throwaway clone of the read clone and diffs the lockfile paths (dep_update_paths, or inferred uv.lock/pnpm-lock.yaml); the read clone is never mutated, nothing is committed/pushed, and a null/failing command originates nothing (fail-safe). A project participates only when projects.dep_update_command is set (migration 049); bounded + deduped per git_url with per-cycle/rolling caps. Armed by ROBOCO_DEP_UPDATE_ENABLED (+ _INTERVAL_SECONDS default 604800 / _MAX_OPEN_TASKS / _MAX_PER_CYCLE); DepUpdateEngine (roboco/services/dep_update_engine.py) + a dedicated _dep_update_loop.

Docs-divergence sync (default-off). Keeps the public docs site honest per release: when a release publishes and the docs site has drifted, DocsSyncEngine (roboco/services/docs_sync_engine.py) opens ONE docs-update task that rides the normal delivery flow (+ PR-review gate) and never auto-merges. Release-triggered, not polling; requires the docs-site repo (roboco-website) registered as a project with a git token; bounded + deduped like the other originate-one-task engines. Armed by ROBOCO_DOCS_SYNC_ENABLED.

Gated release manager (default-off). The autonomy that automates cutting a release up to the decision. A default-off background loop (ReleaseManagerEngine + _release_manager_loop) runs the deterministic readiness sweep (ReleaseReadinessService.assess, roboco/services/release_readiness.py) — diff-since-tag → conventional-commit classification → semver bump → version-reference completeness (the missed-ref guard) → CHANGELOG completeness → docs-drift (agent count) → migration single-head → gate state — and, past a threshold (ROBOCO_RELEASE_MIN_COMMITS, or any feat/security) with a green gate, originates ONE release proposal held for the CEO. The proposal is a source='release_manager' task owned by the Secretary, HELD (confirmed_by_human=False) and skipped by every dispatcher — acted on only by the CEO-gated routes, never delivered. The CEO approves or rejects-with-changes in the panel (release-proposal-card.tsx; GET/POST /api/release/proposal{,/approve,/reject}, CEO-only); approval runs the fail-closed ReleaseExecutor (roboco/services/release_executor.py): write the bumps across the canonical set (derived from the previous chore(release): commit) + the CHANGELOG entry, run make quality (abort before commit on red), commit chore(release): X.Y.Z (signed) + push, wait for green release-commit CI (abort before publish on red), then gh release create vX.Y.Z. Idempotent (an already-published version is a no-op) and never publishes without the CEO. Correctness is deterministic code, not agent judgment; the only generative step is the CHANGELOG prose, which the CEO reviews. Armed by ROBOCO_RELEASE_MANAGER_ENABLED (+ ROBOCO_RELEASE_MIN_COMMITS / _INTERVAL_SECONDS). Auto-deploy stays out of scope — publishing builds images; deploying to the NAS is the CEO's manual step.

Organizational memory loop (default-off). Closes the learn→reuse loop so agents stop cold-respawning blind. Three parts, all gated by ROBOCO_ORG_MEMORY_ENABLED: ① capture — at task completion TaskService._completion_learnings_for distills ONE high-signal lesson (Problem→Approach→Gotcha, ≤120 words) via the local model (MemoryDistiller, roboco/services/memory_distiller.py) instead of the noisy raw-notes/duration capture (flag-off keeps the legacy capture); journal indexing excludes is_private reflections from the shared corpus. ② retrieve (keystone) — on claim, _briefing_for injects context_briefing["institutional_memory"]: top-K (ROBOCO_ORG_MEMORY_TOP_K) relevance-floored (ROBOCO_ORG_MEMORY_MIN_SCORE) lessons + approved playbooks from a role-shaped query (EvidenceRepo.similar_memory over the LEARNINGS + PLAYBOOKS pgvector indexes); below the floor nothing is injected (no briefing bloat). ③ playbooks — a first-class curated procedure store: PlaybookTable (migration 050), the PLAYBOOKS OptimalService index, the draft_playbook content verb (delivery roles), Auditor approve_playbook/reject_playbook/archive_playbook curation (approval indexes it), and the panel review queue (playbook-review-queue.tsx; /api/playbooks Auditor/CEO routes). Distillation runs on the local model only — never a cloud LLM in the hot path; every step is best-effort (a failure never blocks completion or the briefing).

Sandboxed dev DB/Redis/Mongo (default-off). Per-project opt-in (projects.sandbox_services, migration 057); when armed (ROBOCO_SANDBOX_DB_ENABLED), provisioning is on-demand (2026-07-08), not eager at spawn: a developer or QA agent calls the request_sandbox do-verb (role-scoped to _DEV_DO/_QA_DO in role_config.py; services omitted means the project's whole opted-in set) and ContentActions.request_sandbox (roboco/services/gateway/content_actions.py) walks a guard chain — flag off; no active project-bound task; project not opted into any service; a requested service outside the opted set (remediate names the allowed set); orchestrator handle unavailable (the one retryable guard) — before calling AgentOrchestrator.ensure_sandbox, which always provisions the project's whole opted-in set regardless of the requested subset (so a later subset/superset request within that set is a guaranteed cache hit and can never trigger a mid-session teardown of a live container the agent is using), verifies a cache hit is still live before trusting it (evicting + re-provisioning on a dead container), serializes concurrent calls for one agent behind a per-slug asyncio.Lock, and caches the result in-memory per agent slug (_sandbox_info) — the verb filters the returned creds back down to what this call actually asked for. Sibling containers get random per-sandbox creds, tmpfs data dir, memory/cpu caps, labeled roboco.sandbox=1; creds return in the verb's envelope evidence (SandboxInfo.as_payload()), one entry per service including a ready-to-export env sub-dict (ROBOCO_TEST_DB_* / ROBOCO_TEST_REDIS_* / ROBOCO_TEST_MONGO_*) — never injected as container env, so no spawn-time creds delivery exists at all. Spawn itself only injects a cheap marker env ROBOCO_SANDBOX_SERVICES_AVAILABLE=<csv> (never creds) for an opted-in project, plus a briefing line naming request_sandbox() explicitly, in place of the legacy prod-creds gate-env injection (_append_gate_env, which points agents at RoboCo's own production Postgres under ROBOCO_TOOLCHAIN_MATCH_ENABLED) — sandbox replaces, never coexists with, prod creds. A provisioning failure now surfaces as a retryable envelope on the verb, never a spawn refusal — sandbox trouble can no longer block dispatch. A sandbox is torn down at end-of-engagement, not just at container removal: AgentOrchestrator.release_sandbox(agent_slug) is called (best-effort, never failing the verb; a fast cache-check no-op when nothing was ever requested) by the Choreographer on the SUCCESSFUL exit of i_am_done / unclaim / i_am_idle / pass_review / fail_review / i_documented, so a sidecar doesn't outlive the work that requested it. Lifetime still tracks the agent container 1:1 as the backstop: teardown at every removal path plus an orphan janitor at startup + each reaper tick (grace-windowed so a sweep can't reap a sandbox whose request is still mid-flight; the pre-spawn stale-clear likewise spares a just-requested sandbox) also evicts the _sandbox_info cache entry. Known ceiling: the cache is in-memory only — an orchestrator restart forgets live sandboxes, so the next request_sandbox call re-provisions (the pre-clear tears down any still-running stale container) and returns fresh creds. Docker-in-agent stays structurally absent throughout. The service set is a pluggable engine registry (roboco/models/sandbox.py): each engine declares its image, run args, readiness probe, and ROBOCO_TEST_* env; VALID_SANDBOX_SERVICES is derived from the registry, and the provisioner + the verb's payload builder iterate it, so adding an engine (e.g. mongo) is one class + one registry line — no branch edited in the provisioner or the env emitter. Extensions/modules on the fly (2026-07-13): a project may declare sandbox_extensions (migration 072, jsonb null) — a per-service extension/module map (e.g. {"postgres": ["vector", "postgis"], "redis": ["search"]}) activated post-ready via docker exec (CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS / MODULE LOAD) then verified; request_sandbox(extensions=...) unions a per-call override with the project's standing set, bounded to the opted set + a fixed allowlist (SANDBOX_PG_EXTENSIONS = vector/postgis/pg_trgm/citext/uuid-ossp, SANDBOX_REDIS_MODULES = search/json/bloom — plpython3u excluded by construction; mongo has none). No default set — opters set extensions explicitly, existing opters stay bare. A bare request uses the light upstream image; features pull a kitchen-sink image (image_for(features)), so the pgvector+postgis intersection just works. Cache-by-features: a cached entry satisfies a new call iff services are a subset AND per-service requested features are a subset of cached features; a superset re-provisions (rotates creds). The evidence entry carries available_extensions. Set the full set in project settings so agents request subsets.

Cloud auth via FastAPI Users (default-off). Lets the panel/API be safely exposed beyond localhost without touching the CEO's local no-login flow while off. Gated by ROBOCO_CLOUD_AUTH_ENABLED (+ ROBOCO_CLOUD_AUTH_EMAIL / _PASSWORD / _SECRET / _COOKIE_MAX_AGE; Settings fails loud at startup if the flag is on with no secret). Off: get_agent_context (roboco/api/deps.py) and the WS _require_panel_token gate (roboco/api/websocket.py) are byte-for-byte unchanged (header-trust). On: header-trust is dead for humans — any agent-role claim (ceo OR a privileged main_pm/cell_pm/board role) with no valid HMAC token or session cookie is 401, closing the header-spoof hole on the host-published :8000 port for every role, not just ceo (real agents always carry a signed token, so they're unaffected); the agent-fleet HMAC path (and the orchestrator's system self-PATCH) keeps working unmodified in both modes; a valid session cookie authenticates as the single seeded CEO user. New users table (migration 058, UserTable in roboco/db/tables.py) backs FastAPI Users' SQLAlchemyUserDatabase; no registration router — roboco/api/auth/seed.py idempotently upserts exactly one row from env at startup (by primary key, so an email change renames the row instead of duplicating it). roboco/api/auth/backend.py wires a cookie transport (httponly, secure, samesite=lax) + a JWTStrategy subclass that binds each token to a fingerprint of the current hashed_password, so rotating the seeded password invalidates every prior session. Session lifetime is sliding: every authenticated request through get_agent_context re-mints + re-sets the cookie (_slide_session_cookie), so an active session never expires — only genuine inactivity past cloud_auth_cookie_max_age (default 30 days) logs out. GET /api/auth/status is always mounted (public); /api/auth/login + /api/auth/logout mount only when armed (roboco/api/auth/routes.py, mirroring apply_guard's conditional mount). A second route mints the identical cookie without a password: POST /api/telegram/webapp-auth (roboco/api/routes/telegram.py), mounted only when telegram_miniapp_enabled AND cloud_auth_enabled are both armed — see the Telegram bridge entry below. Panel: (auth)/login/page.tsx + proxy.ts (the Next 16 rename of middleware.ts; probes /auth/status over the docker-internal orchestrator URL, not through nginx, and fails open to "off" on any probe error/timeout) gate the (dashboard) group; client.ts adds withCredentials + a 401→/login redirect. nginx needs no changes (/api/auth/* rides the existing /api/ proxy location) — but its own static X-Agent-Token injection (ROBOCO_PANEL_AGENT_TOKEN) is itself a valid HMAC credential that bypasses login when present, so a deployment arming cloud auth for real public exposure should leave that token unset (the two are alternative human-auth tiers, not layered).

RoboCo X account (default-off). The Head-of-Marketing voice on X (Twitter): drafts a post when a release publishes, drafts replies to meaningful mentions, and — a third, independent capability — periodically investigates RoboCo's own shipped features and drafts a spotlight for an under-publicized one. NOTHING auto-posts across any of the three; every tweet is held in a panel queue for the CEO to edit/approve. Gated by ROBOCO_X_ENGINE_ENABLED (+ _MENTIONS_INTERVAL_SECONDS / _MENTIONS_MAX_PER_CYCLE / _MENTIONS_MIN_ENGAGEMENT / _MAX_OPEN_POSTS / X_ACCOUNT_USER_ID); inert without credentials regardless. Mirrors the ReleaseManagerEngine held-artifact shape: XEngine (roboco/services/x_engine.py) originates a held task (source x_post / x_reply / x_feature, confirmed_by_human=False, Secretary-owned, skipped by every dispatcher) whose marker payload carries a body clamped to 280 chars. Release posts hook ReleaseProposalService.approve's publish-success branch via a small draft_release_post seam; mentions ride a dedicated _x_mentions_poll_loop (no webhook infra exists) deduped by a x_seen_mentions ledger + per-cycle/open caps — both are local-model-drafted (never a cloud LLM in the hot path). The spotlight half is the one exception to "no agent spawn": gated by its own sub-switch ROBOCO_X_FEATURE_SPOTLIGHT_ENABLED (+ _INTERVAL_SECONDS, default 3 days) on top of x_engine_enabled — now also the x_feature entry in the Board Program registry (see "Board Program registry" below), armed through the same program_armed chokepoint with these two flags as its legacy alias, migrated behavior-identical — _x_feature_spotlight_loop opens a held PENDING exploration task (source=x_feature_exploration, team=Board, assigned to Head of Marketing, carrying a x_seen_features dedup-ledger snapshot marker) that _dispatch_pm_work routes (mirroring ROADMAP_SOURCE) to a one-shot real cloud-LLM spawn of the Head of Marketing — full read tools, investigates CHANGELOG.md/feature-flags/docs/map/charter/KB, calls the Head-of-Marketing-only propose_feature_spotlight do-tool exactly once, which marks the feature slug seen (x_seen_features table, migration 061) and materializes a brand-new source=x_feature held draft (completing the exploration task as a side effect — a deliberate asymmetry from propose_roadmap, which instead leaves its own task open). The four OAuth 1.0a secrets live Fernet-encrypted in a singleton x_credentials row (migration 059, all-or-nothing set/clear, mirroring the git-token pattern; the API only ever returns has_credentials) — decryption is server-side only, agents never hold creds or egress. XPostService.approve (CEO-only route) is the ONLY caller of x_client.post_tweet: it posts under a Redis single-flight lock, re-reads the committed task state inside the lock and commits COMPLETED before releasing so a concurrent approve can't double-post, and is idempotent (an already-posted draft is a no-op). The hand-rolled OAuth 1.0a HMAC-SHA1 signer (roboco/services/x_client.py) adds no dependency; a NullXClient makes the unconfigured path a graceful no-op (research-engine posture). All three draft kinds share one voice: XEngine._voice_guide reads the CEO-editable company_goals.brand_voice charter field (migration 061, panel-editable in Business → Goals) and appends it to a generic baseline (_HOM_VOICE) — the baseline alone until the CEO supplies a real sample. Panel: x-post-queue.tsx (editable draft + 280 counter, approve/reject, a sourceMeta-driven label/icon per source including "Feature spotlight") + x-credentials-card.tsx (4 write-only secret inputs).

RoboCo video engine (default-off). Bespoke motion-graphics videos (release announcements, feature spotlights, on-demand CEO briefs) authored by a UX/UI dev and distributed to X/TikTok — nothing renders or posts without the flags on, and nothing posts without an explicit CEO approval. Gated by ROBOCO_VIDEO_ENGINE_ENABLED (+ sub-switches ROBOCO_VIDEO_ON_RELEASE / ROBOCO_VIDEO_ON_SPOTLIGHT, and _MAX_OPEN_POSTS / _RENDER_INTERVAL_SECONDS / _RENDER_TIMEOUT_SECONDS / _REQUEST_TIMEOUT_SECONDS / _OUTPUT_DIR); a CEO on-demand brief rides POST /video/request regardless of the release/spotlight sub-switches. A project opts in via projects.video_engine_enabled (migration 063, mirroring ci_watch_enabled): the global flag arms the subsystem, the per-project flag opts a repo into authoring against its motion/ — VideoEngine._opted_in_project no-ops open_video_task until the operator flips it on the project settings page's budget/ops card (Wave C — was the edit-project dialog). Two task kinds mirror the XEngine/ReleaseManagerEngine "originate a CEO-scoped artifact" shape but split across the real delivery lifecycle: VideoEngine.open_video_task (roboco/services/video_engine.py) opens a normal, ASSIGNED authoring task (source=video, confirmed_by_human=True, team=UX/UI, balanced across ux-dev-1/ux-dev-2 by open-task count) that dispatches like any other pre-assigned code task — NOT held, NOT in any dispatcher's skip bucket. The assigned dev builds a HyperFrames HTML composition under motion/compositions/<id>/ and calls the UX/UI-team-gated propose_video do-tool (metadata-only: composition id, input props, per-platform captions — every developer role carries the tool on their manifest, but the runtime _caller_team check rejects a be-dev/fe-dev) to stamp the task's video_draft marker, then commits + open_pr through the normal PR-review gate. Once that authoring task reaches completed, the orchestrator's _video_render_loop (bounded retry, _MAX_VIDEO_RENDER_ATTEMPTS) tars the merged motion/ dir from the project's read-clone and POSTs it to the credential-free video-renderer sidecar (VideoRenderer in roboco/services/video_renderer_client.py, ROBOCO_VIDEO_RENDERER_BASE_URL) to render both the 9:16 and 1:1 cuts to MP4 (video_output_dir); on success VideoEngine._originate_video_post materializes a held video-post draft (source=video_post, confirmed_by_human=False, Secretary-owned, skipped by every dispatcher) carrying mp4_paths ({vertical, square} absolute paths) + the per-platform captions. The CEO reviews it in the panel's video queue (video-post-queue.tsx; GET /video/posts lists drafts including mp4_paths so the panel knows which cuts exist, GET /video/posts/{id}/media?cut=vertical|square streams the MP4 bytes for the preview player, CEO-gated throughout) and edits captions / approves / rejects. VideoPostService.approve (roboco/services/video_post_service.py) is the ONLY caller of the X-v2 (XVideoPoster in x_video_client.py) and TikTok inbox-upload (TikTokPoster in tiktok_client.py) posters; because a video upload + transcode/poll can run well past a minute, the critical section runs under a heartbeat-renewed Redis mutex (heartbeat_mutex.py, mirroring ReleaseProposalService's release-execute lock shape) rather than a flat lock, commits each platform's posted-id durably before attempting the next (a partial failure never re-posts an already-succeeded platform on retry), and is idempotent (an already-COMPLETED draft returns the stored ids without calling a poster again). TikTok's four OAuth2 secrets live Fernet-encrypted in a singleton tiktok_credentials row (mirroring the git-token / x_credentials pattern; the API only ever returns has_credentials) — set via the panel's TikTok credentials card. NullVideoRenderer / NullXVideoPoster / NullTikTokPoster make every unconfigured leg a graceful no-op rather than a crash. Artifact verification (2026-07-16): authoring is gated on the RENDERED clip, not its source — the request_render do-verb (developer/QA, mirroring request_sandbox's shape) renders the caller's actual composition via the sidecar's new frames mode (POST /render with frames=N → ffprobe'd duration + N midpoint-sampled PNGs, tar.gz back) and extracts them to the container-shared {workspaces_root}/{project}/.previews/{task8}/{orientation}/; the dev renders their own working tree (worktree-aware, head_sha/dirty provenance), QA a read-only git archive export of the assembled branch (WorkspaceService.export_branch_motion — the read clone's pinned HEAD undisturbed). Success stamps the render_preview marker; i_am_done on a source=video task refuses without it (Requirement.RENDER_VERIFIED in the tracing gate, mirrored in the possibilities-matrix fast path — the canonical source string lives in foundation as markers.VIDEO_TASK_SOURCE), the dev spawn prompt orders Read-every-frame verification, and QA's claim_review evidence carries a video_context block so the reviewer checks output, not source. A CEO reject of a held video-post draft with a non-empty reason now also re-enters the flow: VideoPostService.reject → VideoEngine.reauthor_from_rejection opens a fresh authoring task carrying the verbatim feedback + a revise-in-place pointer at the existing composition (best-effort, never fails the reject).

Board Program registry (per-program default-off). Twelve new programs plus the two pre-existing origination cycles (roadmap/Printer, x_feature/spotlight — migrated onto the registry byte-for-byte, their own flags kept working as legacy aliases) all now ride one generic engine instead of bespoke per-engine loops. BoardProgram (roboco/foundation/policy/board_programs.py) is a frozen registry entry — key, role (the solo explorer), trigger (cron/metric/event), source (the exploration task's tasks.source marker), default_interval_seconds, max_items_per_cycle, scope (project/org) — for all fourteen entries in PROGRAMS. BoardProgramEngine (roboco/services/board_programs.py) runs the uniform lifecycle TRIGGER → EXPLORE → PROPOSE → DECIDE → MATERIALIZE → LEARN: the orchestrator's _board_program_loop ticks run_due_programs on a floor interval (the shortest registered cadence, clamped 300s-3600s), which for each enabled CRON program checks the board_program_cycles dedup ledger (migration 087 — one row per cycle, auto-closes when its exploration task goes terminal) and program_due, then originates via a per-program _ORIGINATORS callable (each program's own engine's run_cycle) and records the cycle row; open_program_cycle is the same path minus the cron-due check, used by the CEO's panel "run now" and by event/metric triggers. Arming has no master flag: program_armed (the single chokepoint every origination path routes through) reads a per-program settings-store row (board_program.{key}.enabled) falling back to the legacy boot flag only for roadmap/x_feature — every new program is settings-store-only, defaulting OFF until the CEO flips its toggle. Scope + dual polarity: projects.board_programs (migration 088, nullable jsonb) — a scope="project" program (it reads one repo: Pest Control, Spackle, Dogfood, Mirror) needs an affirmative per-project opt-in ("pest_control"; null/absent = out) before a cycle even opens (_scope_gate); a scope="org" program (it reads the org's process/market: Printer, Scales, Periscope, Megaphone, Barfly, War Room, Coroner, Librarian, Sentinel, x_feature) runs org-wide by default and is excluded per-project only by the opposite-polarity "!key" entry — one pure helper, project_participates, implements both. Panel: the project settings page's budget/ops card exposes both forms as checkboxes. LEARN: BoardProgramEngine.record_decision accrues each CEO approve/reject onto the cycle row's decisions jsonb; prior_cycle_context renders the last two closed cycles ("proposed N, approved N; rejected: X — reason") back into the next cycle's exploration prompt, closing the amnesia the old roadmap/spotlight engines had. Dispatchers skip every program source (_is_non_dev_dispatch_source / _dispatch_board_program_exploration's dict-dispatch table) exactly like board_roadmap before; every exploration is a solo one-shot spawn reusing the _board_dispatched tracker + respawn breaker, bypassing the two-reviewer board-review gate. Panel: the Board Programs page (Business section, board-programs-card.tsx → GET /api/board-programs, POST /api/board-programs/{key}/run-now, CEO-only) lists every entry's live enablement/cadence/last-cycle summary/opted-in projects with a toggle and a "run now" button.

The fourteen programs: Printer/roadmap (PO, weekly cron, org) — the pre-existing roadmap cycle, now LEARN-fed and Periscope-briefed; propose_roadmap → backlog tasks. Pest Control/pest_control (PO, weekly cron + a rework-rate-spike metric accelerator, project-scoped) — hunts latent bugs in the findings ledger/rework hotspots/ponytail: debt; propose_bug_hunt (evidence-required) → ≤5 backlog tasks. Spackle/spackle (PO, biweekly cron, project-scoped) — audits half-shipped surface area (routes with no panel, flags with no docs); propose_gap_fill → ≤5 backlog tasks. Scales/scales (PO, monthly cron, org) — reviews the live backlog against the charter; propose_rebalance → a held per-item plan whose approval MUTATES the live task in place (reprioritize or cancel), never creates one. Dogfood/dogfood (PO, event — release-publish hook or CEO run-now, project-scoped) — walks the product as a user; the one program whose spawn also mounts the Playwright MCP, task-scoped via AgentOrchestrator._is_dogfood_spawn (not a role-wide grant); propose_friction_fixes (walked-path evidence required) → ≤5 backlog tasks. Periscope/periscope (HoM, weekly cron, org) — market/competitor research with mandatory source_url citations; propose_market_brief → a held ceo_report, no task, and feeds forward into Printer's prompt. Megaphone/megaphone (HoM, 3-day cron, org) — the standing editorial calendar off shipped-task/CHANGELOG digests; propose_editorial_post → the existing X held-draft queue. Mirror/mirror (HoM, quarterly cron, project-scoped) — audits README/docs-site/website messaging against shipped reality; propose_messaging_fixes → ≤5 backlog docs tasks. Barfly/barfly (HoM, 2-day cron, org) — replies to adjacent X conversations from a screened candidate list (injection_guard.screen_external_text, candidate-id-bound so a reply can't target an invented tweet); propose_conversation_replies → held X drafts. War Room/war_room (HoM, event — release-publish hook WarRoomEngine.open_for_release or CEO run-now, org) — plans a 2-6 post campaign with strictly-ascending publish_after timestamps (guidance only, nothing auto-schedules); propose_campaign → held X drafts as one batch. Coroner/coroner (Auditor, event only — task bounced revision_count>=3, cancelled after work started, or budget-blocked, wired at TaskService's bounce/cancel chokepoints + the orchestrator's budget-block path, org) — one autopsy at a time, no cron; propose_postmortem (process_change.kind one of playbook/prompt_fix/conventions_rule/other) → a held process-change item, or drafts straight into the pending-playbook queue when kind='playbook'. Librarian/librarian (Auditor, biweekly cron, org) — mines journals/learnings for undrafted repeated patterns; propose_playbook_drafts (the Auditor's one exception to "curates but doesn't draft") → 1-3 real DRAFT playbooks via PlaybookService directly, landing in the same curation queue a later Auditor spawn reviews. Sentinel/sentinel (Auditor, weekly cron, org) — waiver/findings/conventions/budget drift watch; propose_quality_report → a held ceo_report, no task. Feature spotlight/x_feature (HoM — unchanged, see "RoboCo X account" below). Every artifact is HELD; the CEO is the only path to materialization — nothing auto-starts, auto-posts, or auto-merges.

Obsidian vault V1+V2 (default-off). The org's human-readable memory palace as a rebuildable DB projection — tasks, journals, and A2A digests as wikilinked markdown — gated by ROBOCO_OBSIDIAN_VAULT_ENABLED + ROBOCO_VAULT_PATH (default off, but both compose files arm it true). VaultWriter (roboco/services/vault_writer.py) is a pure, DB-free materializer under RoboCo/{Tasks/<project-slug>,Journals/<agent-slug>,A2A,Agents,Archive/<year>/Tasks/<project-slug>,Reports}/; every note carries a stable aliases: [<id8>] so a title rename (or an archival move) never breaks a [[id8|title]] cross-link, and private journals are excluded. Four best-effort event seams (TaskService.create's materialize-on-create, TaskService's status-transition frontmatter touch, JournalService, A2AService) patch/append on the relevant transition — a vault write failure never blocks the real action; materialize-on-create means a task's note exists from the moment it's created, not just at curation/rebuild. python -m roboco.vault rebuild re-projects every entity from the DB (preserving an existing task's Auditor-authored ## Narrative, archive-aware so an old terminal task lands directly in Archive/<year>/) and materializes the shipped .obsidian/ config (Dataview, Kanban, graph groups) + RoboCo/_meta/ dashboards + .base Bases views from roboco/vault_assets/; relocate <path> moves the tree, grafting RoboCo/ into an existing personal vault without touching its own config. The Auditor gets a one-shot curate_vault(task_id, narrative) do-tool, spawned by the orchestrator on each completed root task, writing the ## Narrative section a deterministic write otherwise leaves as a placeholder. A second, independently-gated ROBOCO_VAULT_INTAKE_ENABLED watcher (VaultIntakeEngine) turns #roboco-tagged notes under the vault's inbox folder into PENDING, Product-Owner-assigned board-review drafts (source=vault_note) — the identical board-review path a chat-confirmed draft takes, never straight into delivery. Extraction runs on the local model with a deterministic fallback; the note body is screened through foundation/policy/injection_guard.screen_external_text (the same untrusted-content envelope XEngine applies to X mentions — flags an injection-pattern line inline, never removes content) before it reaches the prompt or the fallback. Deduped per (vault-relative path, content hash) via vault_seen_notes, so an edit re-qualifies a previously-seen note — the same hashing convention (every RoboCo feedback callout stripped first, foundation/policy/vault_notes.py) is now shared with the KB engine below. V2 adds three things on top: a drift janitor (services/vault_janitor.py, _vault_janitor_loop) hourly-ticked but gated by a RoboCo/_meta/.janitor_state.json state file so real work (a daily changed-task re-projection + random-sample drift check + archival pass, each capped at 200/cycle and per-item isolated so one bad row never wedges the sweep) and a weekly org-report (vault_report_enabled, default true — VaultWriter.write_org_report from MetricsService/UsageService, best-effort CEO notification) each fire exactly once per elapsed period regardless of loop/restart cadence; archival (vault_archive_days, default 30, 0=off) moving old terminal tasks' notes into RoboCo/Archive/<year>/Tasks/<project>/ during the sweep, alias links making the move free and the shipped Dataview/graph assets Archive/-aware; and KB ingest (vault_kb_enabled, default false — NAS compose arms it true, registry compose leaves it false) embedding the CEO's own RoboCo/Notes/ (config vault_kb_dirs, csv, load-time-validated against traversal/overlap with reserved projection dirs) into a new IndexType.VAULT_NOTES corpus via _vault_kb_loop (services/vault_kb_engine.py, default 900s), with every note re-checked for symlink/path-escape at read time and screened through the injection guard as a hard GATE (a flagged note is quarantined — skipped, logged, callout-marked, never embedded) rather than the intake watcher's screen-and-still-process posture — reaching roboco_kb_search, MentorService's default domain, and EvidenceRepo.similar_memory (claim-time briefings, relevance-floored, labeled vault_note) so the CEO's own writing finally becomes fleet-retrievable institutional memory.

Fable-mode (default-off). Full opus-fable-playbook adoption: makes the fleet behave more like Fable 5 on the existing model tiers (the tiers stay — Fable 5 the model is not an option). Two levers, both gated by ROBOCO_FABLE_MODE_ENABLED: ① doctrine — fable_doctrine_layer() (roboco/agents/factories/_base.py) composes the vendored behavioral doctrine (agents/prompts/doctrine/fable.md, from github.com/rennf93/opus-fable-playbook MIT output-styles/fable.md, YAML frontmatter stripped) into compose_prompt's layer tuple immediately after base.md — universal cross-role doctrine, the same tier as the base rules, ahead of role/team/identity layers so those keep their specificity precedence. ② hooks — 5 vendored scripts under docker/scripts/fable-*.sh (stop-gate, bash-discipline, honesty-nudge, prompt-nudge, precompact; session-start.sh deliberately SKIPPED — its doctrine card is redundant with ① and its output-style check is inapplicable here) are installed alongside RoboCo's own hooks, never replacing them: AgentOrchestrator._fable_hook_groups() appends them AFTER RoboCo's own per-event entries in the Claude-path settings.json (isolated into its own helper to protect _generate_agent_settings's xenon budget); the grok path installs only honesty-nudge (write_grok_fable_hooks, roboco/llm/providers/grok_cli_config.py) — a deliberately conservative V1 scope, since a grok PreToolUse/Stop hook deny cancels the entire run (verified live) while PostToolUse never denies. Off by default: the spawn path (composed prompt, settings.json, grok hooks) is byte-for-byte unchanged when the flag is off. No new eval harness for Fable-specific measurement — that rides the existing rework/spawn-waste/revision_count dashboard (see "Delivery observability" below); the separate golden-task eval harness (roboco/eval/, see below) is an offline CLI bench for a (role, model/provider) cohort, unrelated to Fable-mode's own on/off measurement. Armed on the NAS deploy like the rest; left OFF in docker-compose.registry.yml.

Ponytail (bundled with Fable-mode). Rides ROBOCO_FABLE_MODE_ENABLED — no separate flag. Vendors the ponytail "lazy senior dev" build-laziness doctrine (agents/prompts/doctrine/ponytail.md + ethos sibling, MIT, Copyright (c) 2026 DietrichGebert — trimmed, YAML frontmatter stripped) into every composed system prompt via ponytail_doctrine_layer (roboco/agents/factories/_base.py), slotted immediately after the Fable doctrine layer and gated on the same flag. Role-scoped: developers (AgentRole.DEVELOPER) get the full ladder (YAGNI → reuse-in-this-codebase → stdlib → native-platform → installed-dep → one-line → minimal); every other role gets the ethos-only cut (ponytail-ethos.md) — the code-mechanics rungs are dropped so they can't leak into prose artifacts (task plans, review notes, docs). Both files carry a 5-point RoboCo preamble (the ethos sibling adds a 6th: free-text field obligations) that makes the ladder yield to the Architectural Conventions Standard (placement), the 80% coverage gate + QA review + self-verification, the per-team design bar, task hygiene (everything-is-a-task / commits-linked / state-is-sacred), and reviewer feedback (needs_revision / pr_fail / request_changes) — the overlap mitigation is scoping, not deletion, and it rides ponytail's own "when NOT to be lazy" clause. Developer intensity is tunable via ROBOCO_PONYTAIL_INTENSITY (lite / full / ultra, default full; roboco/config.py ponytail_intensity, a string value — not a feature flag): full enforces the ladder, lite builds what's asked and names the lazier alternative, ultra is YAGNI-extremist (deletion before addition, challenge the requirement). Non-developers get no dial — ultra is wrong for prose artifacts, so the ethos runs a fixed restrained stance. Prompt-only: no hooks, no grok-path changes — ponytail adds no hook surface, so bundling it under the Fable flag changes only the composed prompt, not the spawn hooks. The Fable flag's description in roboco/config.py names both doctrines.

Golden-task eval harness (source-checkout-only offline CLI). roboco/eval/ replays a fixed set of BenchTaskSpec fixtures (roboco/eval/fixtures.py) through the REAL delivery lifecycle in a disposable environment reused from tests/e2e_smoke/harness.py (fake GitHub REST, a real local git origin, a throwaway DB) — real isolation, not a mock. EvalRunner.run_cohort (roboco/eval/runner.py) scores each fixture on deterministic metrics (final status, revision_count, cycle time, tokens/cost via the agent_spawn_sessions task_id join) plus a local-model judge comparing the final PR diff + notes against the fixture's checked-in expectations, nested under a "non_deterministic": true-marked "judge" object so a naive cohort diff never mistakes judge noise for a real regression. agent_spawn_sessions.doctrine_version (migration 081) is stamped at spawn-session finalize from the composed prompt layers, so a cohort's model + doctrine combination (e.g. Fable-mode on vs. off) is durably identifiable after the fact. Real-spawn is cut for this release: OrchestratorStageSpawner raises NotImplementedError at construction — a real spawn's MCP wiring would resolve to the REAL production orchestrator under real agent UUIDs, unsafe for a bench run — so python -m roboco.eval run is wired but not yet functional; the only working path today is driving EvalRunner with an injected scripted StageSpawner from Python (see tests/e2e_smoke/test_eval_bench.py). Scoped to developer-role fixtures only (run_cohort refuses any other role) and only runs from a source checkout (tests/e2e_smoke isn't shipped in containers or wheels); bench runs also patch every vault flag off so a bench task/note/journal write never lands in the operator's real Obsidian vault.

Env-branches ladder + EnvSyncEngine (default-off ROBOCO_ENV_SYNC_ENABLED). Replaces a project's single default_branch with an ordered environment ladder: nullable projects.environments JSONB (migration 073), an ordered list[{name, branch}] where index 0 is the head rung (where dev/cell/leaf PRs land) and index -1 is the prod rung (where the gated release executor commits + tags); middle rungs are intermediates (qa/stag). A null ladder degenerates to a single-branch ladder synthesized from default_branch at read time (roboco/models/env_branches.py: head_branch / prod_branch / ladder_pairs / promotion_chain) — no backfill, byte-for-byte legacy behavior until the CEO declares a real split. Every former default_branch consumer now routes through the shim: the PR target and per-agent clone (WorkspaceService.ensure_workspace / ensure_read_clone), the CI branch, the release executor's clone/commit/tag target (_ReleaseContext.prod_branch) plus its full-chain head→…→prod promotion before bumping (promote_env_chain, fail-closed promotion_failed on a merge conflict), and release_readiness's diff baseline (prod..head instead of last_tag..HEAD) with a tag-drift cross-check (_tag_drift_gaps — the last tag's commit vs. prod tip disagreeing flags a hotfix that landed on prod after the tag). EnvSyncEngine (roboco/services/env_sync_engine.py) cascades the ladder prod→…→head via GitHub's merges API: a clean merge auto-pushes straight to the lower rung, a conflict opens ONE idempotent sync PR + a Main-PM coordination task and stops that project's cascade for the cycle — the cascade's target is never the prod rung by construction, so "only the CEO merges master" still holds. Bounded + deduped per repo (one open env_sync task at a time). Panel: an environment-ladder editor on the project edit dialog.

Telegram notifications bridge V1+V2+V3 (default-off ROBOCO_TELEGRAM_ENABLED). V1: best-effort, outbound-only Telegram DMs to the CEO on escalation and completion. Mirrors the x_credentials pattern: a singleton Fernet-encrypted telegram_credentials row (migration 074, bot token + chat id; the API returns has_credentials only) behind CEO-only /telegram/credentials routes and a panel credentials card. _notify_telegram (roboco/services/notification_delivery.py) fans out from notify_ceo_of_escalation / notify_ceo_of_completion, sending only the notification's subject plus an optional panel deep-link (panel_base_url) — never the body — via a deferred, best-effort send that never raises into the producer (NullTelegramClient when unconfigured or the flag is off, LiveTelegramClient posting to the Bot API otherwise). V2 (ROBOCO_TELEGRAM_INBOUND_ENABLED, sub-switch on top of V1's flag — both plus stored credentials are required, otherwise the bot only sends and never listens) makes the bridge two-way: TelegramInboundEngine (roboco/services/telegram_inbound.py) long-polls getUpdates from a dedicated orchestrator loop (_telegram_poll_loop), authorizing every update by BOTH chat id and sender id, and routes /status / /queue / /task commands plus Approve/Reject/Open inline-keyboard taps (a compact apv|rej:<kind>:<id8> callback codec; a reject reason or a task-approve note is collected via a force_reply prompt held in a TTL'd in-memory pending-action map) through the SAME CEO-gated service calls the HTTP routes make (task/release/xpost/video/roadmap), stamping a via=telegram audit row on each. Escalation DMs (not completion DMs) carry the actionable keyboard when V2 is armed. All bot/bridge messages are HTML-styled (parse_mode=HTML with mandatory _esc/_esc_attr escaping at every dynamic interpolation and balance-aware 4096 truncation — the injection posture moved from no-parse_mode to escaping discipline), and every held-draft origination (release proposal, X post, video post, roadmap item via propose_roadmap) pushes a styled DM with its Approve/Reject keyboard the moment it materializes (notify_ceo_of_queue_item, best-effort, sharing /queue's renderer). Closing the loop exposed a real hole: a stale Approve/Reject button targets its item by id regardless of current status, so ReleaseProposalService.approve/.reject, XPostService.approve, and VideoPostService.approve now all refuse an already-CANCELLED (rejected) or already-COMPLETED (published/posted) target instead of silently re-executing — a fix that also closes the identical hole via a replayed HTTP call, not just Telegram. V3 adds a Telegram Mini App sign-in: POST /api/telegram/webapp-auth (roboco/api/routes/telegram.py, mounted only when telegram_miniapp_enabled AND cloud_auth_enabled are both armed — telegram_miniapp_enabled is env-only like cloud_auth_enabled, deliberately off the panel feature-flags card, and fails loud at startup if armed without cloud auth on) validates Telegram's signed initData (roboco/utils/telegram_initdata.py — pure HMAC-SHA256 WebAppData-keyed validation, constant-time compare, a telegram_initdata_max_age_seconds freshness window with 60s clock-skew tolerance) against the stored bot token and the CEO's own chat_id, then mints the same cloud-auth session cookie /api/auth/login issues — turning the CEO's phone into a real panel client at the new (tg) route group (/tg: Approvals/Inbox/Board/Chat tabs, outside the normal dashboard shell; proxy.ts's matcher excludes tg(?:/|$) so a phone session is never bounced to the password /login page it can't reach). Requires a public HTTPS origin (the cookie is secure-only) and BotFather's /setmenubutton pointed at https://<host>/tg. V4 (Mini App V4) rebuilds the cockpit and the command tier on both sides. Panel: the (tg) surface opens on a "Today" brief (GET /api/telegram/today, CEO-gated, one DB-only round trip via TgCockpitService — needs-you items, held-draft counts, fleet with per-agent task titles, day-rollup spend, ship state), the Approvals tab is a native card stack over all four held-draft queues (MainButton/BackButton/haptics with visible fallbacks; X 280-counter editing, blob-fetched video player, per-AC release view; a failed queue source is surfaced, never rendered as "queue is clear"), Chat/Today ride the shared /ws/system socket (invalidate-on-frame, poll fallback), theme adopts the user's Telegram themeParams scoped to #tg-shell, a dev-only mock bridge + /tg?demo=1 fixtures make the whole surface workable in a plain browser, and shared primitives (panel/src/components/tg/ui.tsx) carry the visual language. Bot: BOT_COMMANDS is the single registry driving /help AND a once-per-process Bot API setMyCommands sync; /agents /usage /blocked join the read tier, and /secretary + /newtask bridge the chat into the SAME in-process live runtimes the panel drives (roboco/services/telegram_bridge.py): a per-chat consumer task drains the PrompterLiveRegistry stream (sole consumer — no sync reply seam exists) and pushes one Telegram message per turn_end; free text routes into the live session; a draft event becomes a Send-to-Board/Discard keyboard whose confirm runs PrompterService.confirm_live_draft(route="board") and PARKS the session so board feedback streams back into the thread; /end reaps; the bridge sweeps its own idle TTL (the held stream arms the registry keepalive, so the registry's reap never fires), parked sessions exempt. Intake/secretary containers are process-wide singletons, so a bridged session preempts a live panel session of the same kind by construction; MegaTask batches still confirm in the panel only. V6 (Mini App V6) is the premium overhaul: a native-type design system on the #tg-shell tokens (borderless elevated cards, wallet-style tabular-numeral heroes, floating dock; Share Tech Mono demoted to the ROBOCO_ wordmark only) with Telegram window-chrome painting riding the theme bridge (setHeaderColor/setBackgroundColor/setBottomBarColor); Inbox moves behind a header bell as a pushed sub-page with humanized notifications (UUIDs resolve to task names via the Board's shared task index, tg-format.tsx); a new Metrics tab (period-segmented spend hero + by-agent/team/model + delivery/efficiency; tapping an agent pushes a drilldown over the previously-untapped /usage/time-series?agent_slug plus the member scorecard); Chat is rebuilt with honest scopes — Mine rides the participant-scoped /a2a/chat/conversations (resolved peer, real unread counts, mark-read on open, plain CEO send) while Fleet rides the admin list (task-linked threads interject via replyAsCeo with a recipient chip, task-less threads are watch-only), both with markdown transcripts, live pulse flashes, and a pinned Secretary live chat on the same secretary_live SSE session runtime the panel drives; and the Board task sheet carries the CEO's own decide verbs (approve / request-changes / unblock) instead of being read-only. The /api/dashboard/* router is now require_panel_token-gated at router level (mirroring /api/usage), closing the unauthenticated metrics/scorecard exposure.

Possibilities matrix (default-off ROBOCO_POSSIBILITIES_MATRIX_ENABLED). A work-already-done fast path on i_am_done: when a claimed/in_progress task already has commits, an open PR, every acceptance criterion addressed, and no open findings (_work_appears_done), the dev submits straight to QA in one call instead of the standard multi-turn plan/journal/local-gate derivation. _i_am_done_fast_path still runs the non-negotiable guards — ownership, branch-pushed, not-behind-base, conventions, FINDINGS_ADDRESSED — and trusts the PR's own CI-green signal as the quality-gate proxy (_fast_path_quality_verdict, the same signal pr_pass trusts); a repo with no CI signal falls back to the local make quality gate (plus the toolchain-match guard when ROBOCO_TOOLCHAIN_MATCH_ENABLED is armed), and a known-red CI refuses the fast path outright rather than shipping it to QA. The orchestrator's dev spawn prompt steers a matching task to a WORK_ALREADY_DONE state that tells the dev to call i_am_done directly instead of re-deriving what's already done.

Reviewer/PM collision map (always-on). The collision surface authored at delegate time (intends_to_touch / adds_migration / touches_shared) used to be consumed once by SequencingService to wire dependency edges and never shown to a reviewer again. build_collision_context (roboco/services/gateway/choreographer/collision.py, pure — no DB/IO) now surfaces it for a task under review: same-parent siblings that would collide — overlapping declared file globs, or both adding a migration (the Alembic-head collision needs no file overlap) — rendered with the overlapping globs and, where the caller hands real touched files, a declared-vs-actual drift flag. Capped at 10 siblings / 5 globs. The same builder feeds QA's claim_review evidence, the PR-gate's claim_gate_review evidence, the PM's i_will_plan planning briefing (no drift there — no work yet), and the panel's GET /api/tasks/{id}/collision-map route backing a Collision tab on the task detail page.

Delegation detail-fidelity (always-on, 2026-07-16). Details no longer thin out at hand-off in either direction. DOWN: delegate refuses any child that doesn't declare covers_parent_criteria mapping onto the parent's real acceptance criteria (matched by id or exact text; an unresolvable ref is rejected naming the valid criteria, never silently dropped — previously the mapping was optional and coverage surfaced only at submit_up's roll-up gate, after the whole wave had already run); the success envelope carries parent_ac_coverage {covered, uncovered} so a wave-planning PM sees remaining gaps in the same turn, while multi-wave planning stays legal. UP: pass_review requires criteria_verified — one {criterion, evidence} entry per task acceptance criterion (the findings ledger's id-or-exact-text matcher, soup-checked and length-capped evidence), rejecting with the unverified criteria named; entries render deterministically into qa_notes as [AC] <criterion> — verified: <evidence> lines, so a gestalt "looks good" pass is structurally impossible. Video briefs stopped being prose-only: an enumerable feature list (release highlights, or input_props.highlights carried onto a reject re-author) becomes its own acceptance criterion ("Every brief-named feature appears as its own fully readable scene: …", bounded to the AC caps; a re-author without highlights carries "every point in the CEO rejection feedback is visibly addressed"), so the dropped-scene class — a four-feature brief shipping three scenes past every gate — is caught by the QA per-AC stamp instead of the CEO's eyeball.

Task/project cost budgets (default-off ROBOCO_TASK_BUDGETS_ENABLED). tasks.budget_usd + projects.monthly_budget_usd (migration 080). Claim-time: a project-month-spend guard (project_budget_exceeded_guard, roboco/services/gateway/claim_guards.py) applies only to WORK-STARTING claims (i_will_work_on / i_will_plan) — review/doc/gate/inbound-PR claims are exempt so in-flight work can always finish reviewing and merging even at cap; spend counts closed sessions' estimated_cost_usd plus open sessions priced live from token snapshots. Sweep-side: the orchestrator's existing budget sweep also prices the active task's own spend against budget_usd (explicit-input only — a null budget means no cap, resolved by effective_task_budget_usd in roboco/foundation/policy/agent_loop.py; the earlier per-TaskType default table blocked an unbudgeted coordination root one opus turn in and was removed); on breach the task is BLOCKED (HUMAN resolver, budget marker) BEFORE the graceful stop so the unclaim no-ops and the dispatcher never respawns onto it, and the CEO notification names both recovery steps — unblock on a budget-blocked task re-checks live spend and refuses while still over, so there's no silent re-breach loop. Off => neither cap is ever consulted regardless of field values. Panel: budget inputs on both the project and task dialogs (a 0 is rejected — it would silently block everything); spend math is consolidated in TaskService.task_spend_usd.

PR labeler (always-on). derive_pr_labels (roboco/foundation/policy/pr_labels.py, pure) derives the org-structure label vocabulary every fleet PR now carries: to {base_branch} — the PR's REAL resolved target branch, verbatim (never assumed from is_root_pr, so a project with a renamed/non-standard trunk or an env-ladder rung gets an accurate label instead of a hardcoded master/slave), root for an assembled root PR, MegaTask for a batch-carrying task, and a layer label (main-pm for a Main-PM coordination root, cell/{team} for a cell-assembled PR, else subtask/{team} for a leaf dev PR). Applied best-effort at all three PR-opening sites in GitService so a human triaging the PR queue sees which tree and which org layer a PR belongs to at a glance.

Feature flags / company-in-a-box. Env-gated, default-off subsystems toggle from the panel's Settings → Feature Flags card (panel/src/components/settings/feature-flags-card.tsx) instead of hand-editing env: web research (ROBOCO_RESEARCH_ENABLED), the strategy engine (ROBOCO_STRATEGY_ENGINE_ENABLED), pitch provisioning (ROBOCO_PROVISIONING_*), external / internal PR review, the agent-runtime toolchain match (ROBOCO_TOOLCHAIN_MATCH_ENABLED), the architectural-conventions standard (ROBOCO_CONVENTIONS_ENABLED), gateway-health recovery (ROBOCO_GATEWAY_HEALTH_ENABLED), multi-repo CI-watch (ROBOCO_CI_WATCH_ENABLED), the dependency-update bot (ROBOCO_DEP_UPDATE_ENABLED), the gated release manager (ROBOCO_RELEASE_MANAGER_ENABLED), the organizational memory loop (ROBOCO_ORG_MEMORY_ENABLED), the sandboxed dev DB/Redis (ROBOCO_SANDBOX_DB_ENABLED), the RoboCo X account (ROBOCO_X_ENGINE_ENABLED), the RoboCo video engine (ROBOCO_VIDEO_ENGINE_ENABLED), the legacy board roadmap/spotlight flags (ROBOCO_ROADMAP_ENGINE_ENABLED, ROBOCO_X_FEATURE_SPOTLIGHT_ENABLED) — the other twelve Board Programs arm per-program on the dedicated Board Programs page (Business section) instead, not this card, since each toggles its own board_program.{key}.enabled settings-store row rather than an env-backed flag — Fable-mode (ROBOCO_FABLE_MODE_ENABLED), the vault weekly report + KB ingest (ROBOCO_VAULT_REPORT_ENABLED / ROBOCO_VAULT_KB_ENABLED), the env-sync cascade (ROBOCO_ENV_SYNC_ENABLED), the Telegram notifications bridge (ROBOCO_TELEGRAM_ENABLED, + inbound commands/actionable buttons sub-switch ROBOCO_TELEGRAM_INBOUND_ENABLED), the possibilities matrix (ROBOCO_POSSIBILITIES_MATRIX_ENABLED), the docs-divergence sync (ROBOCO_DOCS_SYNC_ENABLED), task/project cost budgets (ROBOCO_TASK_BUDGETS_ENABLED), and the self-heal flags above. Cloud auth (ROBOCO_CLOUD_AUTH_ENABLED) is deliberately NOT on this card — like ROBOCO_DB_NETWORK_ISOLATED, it's a compose/env-coupled flag a runtime toggle can't safely flip mid-session. A toggle persists in the settings store and takes effect on the next backend restart; an unset flag falls back to its environment / config default.

Architectural Conventions Standard

Per-project architectural standard (default-off). Beyond the make-style gates (which check syntax/types/tests, not where code lives), each project can carry a repo-canonical .roboco/conventions.yml — an architecture map (which definition kinds belong in which modules), a toggleable rule set, custom regex rules, and waivers — so an agent cannot land a Pydantic model defined inside a router or a # noqa / # type: ignore. Placement of a helper (any top-level function) only warns — too blunt to hard-block; thin_routes doesn't count an explicit db.commit(); and a small allowlist of unavoidable framework suppressions (ruff TC001–TC003, pydantic prop-decorator) is exempt. Gated by ROBOCO_CONVENTIONS_ENABLED; fully inert when off. RoboCo itself ships a canonical .roboco/conventions.yml.

Effective map. Consumers read the effective map — auto-derived defaults (from a repo scan + BUILTIN_RULES, excluding tests//docs/ trees) overlaid by the committed file — so behaviour is identical whether the file is present, absent, or partial. ConventionsService (roboco/services/conventions.py) builds it, caches it per (project, HEAD sha) in project_conventions_cache (migration 043), renders the per-task baseline constraints + the ambient prompt block, and scaffolds/restores the file via a PR (GitService.open_conventions_pr). The committed file + scan are read from a dedicated project-level read clone the service ensures on demand (WorkspaceService.ensure_read_clone, pinned to the default branch's HEAD) — the backfill that makes the standard resolve even for a project created before it existed, with no manual workspace_path. The schema lives in roboco/foundation/policy/conventions/ (pure).

Validator. A single Python CLI, python -m roboco.conventions check --root <repo> --files <a> <b> ... (roboco/conventions/), uses tree-sitter (Python + TypeScript grammars, shipped in the agent image) to classify each changed definition and flag forbidden placements + hygiene + custom-rule matches as JSONL findings, after waiver filtering. Precision over recall (it abstains when uncertain so a block gate can't false-positive-strand a task) and fail-loud (a validator that cannot run exits 3 so the gate blocks, never silently passes).

Threading + enforcement. The standard reaches the work two ways: an ambient "Architectural Standard" block injected at spawn (compose_prompt) and an auto-attached ## Constraints section on every project task (TaskService.create). Enforcement is deterministic: a block-level finding refuses i_am_done (dev pre-submit) and pr_pass (the in-path PR gate) with the offending file:line + fix hint; findings also surface in QA's claim_review evidence (convention_findings). A false positive is relieved by a waiver the dev commits in their branch — accountable, reviewed in the PR. The panel's per-project Conventions tab (a page-level tab on /projects/[id]/settings, Wave C — was a tab inside the edit-project dialog) shows the map + health and offers Save / Restore.

Design Bar

FE/UX-UI design bar (prompt-only, always on). Frontend and UX/UI team agents carry a design-taste bar distilled from Leonxlnx/taste-skill (MIT) in their team prompts, so agent-authored UI stops defaulting to generic-AI layout/fonts/motion. It's a ## Design bar section appended to agents/prompts/teams/frontend.md and agents/prompts/teams/ux_ui.md, reached by every cell role on those teams (dev/QA/PM/Documenter) via the team prompt layer, plus a pointer in the shared agents/prompts/roles/developer.md so fe-dev/ux-dev know to look for it without leaking the content into be-dev's prompt. It covers three tuning dials — DESIGN_VARIANCE / MOTION_INTENSITY / VISUAL_DENSITY (1-10 each; dense product UI like the panel defaults to 2-3 / 2-3 / 7-8) — plus typography/hierarchy, spacing/layout, motion, and "AI tells to avoid" rules, scoped to respect a project's existing design system (fonts, colors, radius) rather than silently override it. Prompt-only: compose_prompt itself is unchanged, no new verb/gate/state; guarded by tests/unit/agents/test_design_bar_layer.py.

Niche aesthetics + Image direction (the deferred taste-skill half, prompt-only, always on). Two more Leonxlnx/taste-skill (MIT) distillations on top of the core Design bar. A ## Niche aesthetic vocabularies section (identical body in both frontend.md and ux_ui.md) names three opt-in visual systems — industrial brutalist, minimalist editorial, premium agency — each keyed to the same three dials (a vocabulary changes what the dials produce, not whether they apply); picked only when a task brief explicitly calls for one, never a default. A ## Image direction section lives in ux_ui.md only (that team owns visual-asset/motion-composition work): composition variety, palette discipline, anti-slop imagery, iconography, mockup/device-frame conventions, and cross-asset set consistency, distilled from taste-skill's imagegen skills; frontend.md carries a one-line pointer to it instead of duplicating the content. Guarded by the same tests/unit/agents/test_design_bar_layer.py.

MegaTask (sequenced batch intake)

MegaTask lets the CEO describe several tasks in one Intake chat and ship them as one collision-aware, sequenced batch — even across projects that don't share a codebase (the motivating case: a SaaS app + its OSS core engine + a framework adapter). It is a core capability, not a feature flag (additive + opt-in by nature: proposed only when the CEO asks for several tasks; single-task intake is byte-for-byte unchanged), branded "MegaTask" on every user-facing surface while internal names stay technical (batch_id, SequencingService).

The umbrella model. A MegaTask's identity is a real umbrella task — branchless, no PR of its own — over N root-subtasks, each a real Main-PM coordination root with its own project_id, branch, and PR. Hierarchy: Umbrella (Main PM) → N Root-subtasks (Main PM) → Cell tasks (cell PMs) → Dev subtasks. One extra Main-PM layer on top of the normal model. The umbrella is the single board-review / CEO-approve / Main-PM-coordinate unit, so the batch plugs into the existing coordination-root flow for free (task tree, progress rollup, CEO queue).

Identity predicate (single source of truth). roboco/foundation/policy/batch.py: is_batch_umbrella (batch_id set AND parent_task_id None), is_batch_root_subtask (batch_id set AND parented), is_branchless_coordination ((no-project AND product) OR umbrella). Every git-exemption site consults it so the umbrella's exemptions can't drift: the orchestrator's _is_coordination_task, the claim→in_progress branch gate (GitContext.is_coordination), _ensure_branch_for_task (returns "" for an umbrella), and the CEO-reject routing. submit_root hard-rejects an umbrella (it assembles no PR); umbrella completion reuses the existing branchless path (all_subtasks_terminal, PR waived → escalate to CEO).

Sequencing. The pure SequencingService.analyze(surfaces, cell_of, cell_capacity) (roboco/services/sequencing.py; schema in roboco/foundation/policy/sequencing/) turns each draft's collision surface — intends_to_touch (globs), adds_migration, touches_shared — into a dependency DAG + Kahn-layered waves: file-overlap serializes (more-important first by (priority, idx)), migration-adders chain serially, a shared-surface edit runs after each non-shared task it overlaps (file-overlap-conditioned), independent tasks run in parallel; cell-contention only warns. Correctness lives in code, not agent judgment. The columns tasks.batch_id + intends_to_touch / adds_migration / touches_shared are migration 046.

Intake + create path. The intake chat can be scoped to a MegaTask (a multi-project picker → StartLiveRequest.project_ids); the orchestrator clones each repo (_clone_intake_scope / _slugs_for_project_ids, the multi-repo machinery products already used). The intake agent proposes the whole batch with one propose_batch tool call — wired on both runtimes (the Claude SDK driver emits one batch stream chunk; the grok intake_server POSTs a batch relay event). The panel's third intake scope accumulates it into a Review-MegaTask card → POST /prompter/live/{session}/confirm-batch. PrompterService.confirm_live_batch builds the umbrella + N root-subtasks (via create_task_from_draft + a BatchPlacement) and wires the analyzer edges through add_dependency. The Board route holds the root-subtasks in BACKLOG until approve_and_start releases them (_activate_batch_root_subtasks); the Main-PM route dispatches wave 0 at once. The Product Owner + Head of Marketing review the whole batch (their identity prompts carry a MegaTask section).

Board-review → redraft loop (batch parity). A first board-route batch confirm PARKS the intake session against the umbrella instead of reaping it — the same keep-alive loop single drafts get. When both board reviewers finish, the orchestrator injects a batch-aware brief into the still-live chat (_compose_parked_intake_redraft → compose_batch_redraft_message: every live root-subtask's snapshot + the board's decision notes + an explicit one-propose_batch-call re-proposal instruction); the revised batch re-confirms with BatchConfirmRequest.task_id set, which routes to PrompterService.update_live_batch — an in-place update, not a new batch: umbrella prose re-composed, live root-subtasks positionally patched (cancel+recreate only on a per-item scope change; create/cancel on count changes), dependency edges rewired to the fresh wave plan, and the create path's _validate_batch_scope gate re-applied so a redraft can't collapse the batch to one project or drift outside the scoped repos. Every reader uses the CANCELLED-excluding get_live_subtasks view, so multi-round redrafts survive earlier cancels. The cold fallback (POST /prompter/live/re-interview/{task_id}, the task-detail "Re-draft with board feedback" button) now handles the branchless umbrella by recovering its multi-repo scope from the live children (TaskService.distinct_projects_for_batch) and returning project_ids so the panel re-enters batch mode. On the re-confirm, route="main_pm" approves-and-starts (releasing the BACKLOG children) and route="board" clears board_review_complete for another review round; a redraft re-confirm always reaps (parity with single drafts — later rounds ride the cold path). Panel side: confirmBatch's board branch keeps the chat open and threads batchRedraftTaskIdRef (persisted with the chat) into the next confirm.

Services

Core services in roboco/services/:

Service	Purpose
TaskService	Task CRUD and state transitions
WorkSessionService	Git session management, PR lifecycle
WorkspaceService	Multi-agent workspace resolution and cloning
ProjectService	Project/repository management
NotificationService	Formal notifications
JournalService	Agent journals and entries
OptimalService	RAG queries (in-house pgvector engine)
PermissionsService	Role-based access control

Configuration

Key settings in roboco/config.py (env prefix: ROBOCO_):

# Database
ROBOCO_DATABASE_HOST=localhost
ROBOCO_DATABASE_PORT=5432
ROBOCO_DATABASE_USER=roboco
ROBOCO_DATABASE_PASSWORD=roboco
ROBOCO_DATABASE_NAME=roboco

# Redis
ROBOCO_REDIS_HOST=localhost
ROBOCO_REDIS_PORT=6379

# Security (REQUIRED)
# Generate with: python -c 'from cryptography.fernet import Fernet; print(Fernet.generate_key().decode())'
ROBOCO_ENCRYPTION_KEY=<your-fernet-key>

# Workspaces
ROBOCO_WORKSPACES_ROOT=/data/workspaces
ROBOCO_WORKSPACE_AUTO_CLONE=true
ROBOCO_WORKSPACE_CLONE_TIMEOUT=300

# RAG (in-house pgvector engine)
ROBOCO_RAG_CHUNK_STRATEGY=fixed
ROBOCO_RAG_CHUNK_SIZE=512
ROBOCO_RAG_USE_HYDE=true
ROBOCO_RAG_USE_HYBRID_SEARCH=true

# AI/LLM
ROBOCO_DEFAULT_EMBEDDING_MODEL=qwen3-embedding:0.6b
ROBOCO_LOCAL_LLM_MODEL=glm-5.2:cloud
ROBOCO_LOCAL_LLM_BASE_URL=http://roboco-ollama:11434/v1
ROBOCO_OLLAMA_BASE_URL=http://roboco-ollama:11434

# Doctrine (bundled with fable-mode)
ROBOCO_PONYTAIL_INTENSITY=full      # lite/full/ultra — developer ladder intensity (bundled with fable-mode)

Docker Deployment

Container Architecture

The system runs as Docker Compose services. All Dockerfiles live under docker/ at the project root; every service uses context: . plus dockerfile: docker/<name>.Dockerfile.

Service	Purpose	Healthcheck
postgres	PostgreSQL + pgvector	pg_isready
redis	Cache, sessions, event bus	redis-cli ping
ollama	Local LLM + embeddings	ollama list
ollama-init	Pulls models on startup	One-shot
backup	Daily pg_dump sidecar, data-only network, newest-14 rotation — see docs/backend/ops/database-backups.md	—
agent-base-image / agent-*-image	Pre-built images spawned per agent	One-shot
orchestrator	API + agent spawner	Depends on all above
panel	Next.js control panel (internal, port 3000)	—
nginx	Reverse proxy fronting panel + orchestrator	—

Quickstart (registry pull-and-run)

make quickstart runs scripts/bootstrap.sh: idempotent one-command bring-up for the pull-and-run deploy (docker-compose.registry.yml). A fresh .env is copied from .env.example and the three required secrets are injected using the documented one-liners (the panel token via the exact HMAC formula issue_panel_token uses), with a standing-credential warning (louder if cloud auth is detected) — compose's :? guard refuses an empty token unconditionally. A reused .env is never touched, but the three required vars are pre-validated with pointed remedies instead of compose's opaque interpolation error. It then pulls + up -d + runs a doctor-style readiness sweep grounded in real surfaces (root /health, /api/auth/status through nginx, the verbatim "Alembic upgrade finished" log line, ollama list), each stage failing loud with the exact command to run next. .github/workflows/release.yml's pull-smoke job (fresh runner, own GHCR login, needs publish-images) literally pulls the registry compose against the just-published tag on every release — guarding the missing-image regression class that already happened once.

Single Entry Point

nginx is the only externally-exposed service. It listens on localhost:3000 and routes:

• /api/* and /ws/* → orchestrator:8000
• everything else → panel:3000

This avoids CORS since the browser sees one origin. The Next.js code uses relative URLs (/api, /ws) and lets nginx do the dispatch.

Network topology (DB isolation)

Two user-defined bridges: roboco_default (the agent mesh — panel, nginx, ollama, every spawned agent container, and their sandbox DB/Redis sidecars) and roboco_data (postgres + redis ONLY). The orchestrator is the only multi-homed service (both networks), so agent containers cannot resolve or TCP-reach roboco-postgres:5432 / roboco-redis:6379 at all — network membership is the containment (redis has no auth). Agent↔agent A2A (:9000), orchestrator→agent SDK polls (:9000), MCP→orchestrator (:8000), and host-published ports (15432/16379/11435) are unaffected; docker exec/inspect paths ride the daemon socket, not the network. ROBOCO_DB_NETWORK_ISOLATED (config default false) is set true by the compose files that carry this topology and suppresses the legacy _append_gate_env prod-creds injection (unreachable creds are worse than none); DB-needing projects use the sandbox opt-in instead. The flag is deliberately NOT in the panel feature-flags card — it must travel with the compose networks: stanzas.

WebSocket streams

The orchestrator exposes WebSocket endpoints under /ws (router in roboco/api/websocket.py, ConnectionManager + broadcast_* helpers):

Endpoint	Purpose
/ws/agents/{id}, /ws/notifications/{id}	Per-resource live streams
/ws/system	Operator/system-wide stream (no per-agent keying) — the rate-limit lifecycle (RATE_LIMIT_HIT / RATE_LIMIT_LIFTED), live usage (USAGE_SNAPSHOT, pushed to the usage dashboard), and A2A message events (a2a.message frames)

Server-side events reach these sockets through roboco/api/websocket_bridge.py, which subscribes to the StreamEventBus and forwards each event to the matching connections. To add a new live event: define an EventType (dotted value), publish it to the bus, add a _handle_* forwarder in websocket_bridge, and consume it on the panel via the useWebSocket("/<endpoint>", …) hook — do not stand up a parallel endpoint or client stack. A2A_MESSAGE_SENT is the worked example: A2AService.send publishes it (excerpt-capped payload), the bridge forwards it to /ws/system as an a2a.message frame, and the panel's useA2ALiveStream hook (a second consumer of that same shared /ws/system connection) consumes it to invalidate-on-frame.

Rate limiting & usage

• Provider rate limits are tracked in Redis (RateLimitStateTracker, roboco/services/gateway/). On a provider 429 an agent calls i_am_blocked(reason="rate_limited"); the spawn gate then queues (never drops) further work for that provider, and a background probe-and-resume loop in the orchestrator clears the limit and revives parked agents when it lifts.
• Provider overloads reuse the same park-and-probe break. A persistent model-API overload (HTTP 529 / 500 / 503 — the SDK already retries transient ones) parks the provider exactly like a 429 instead of crash-retrying the agent straight back into the overload and burning tokens; the overload is detected orchestrator-side from the dead container's log markers, and the background loop revives the parked work when it recovers. The same break also catches the Claude session-limit 429 (the org's 5-hour usage window): an agent exiting with a 0-token session-limit rejection parks the provider and is auto-revived when the window resets, instead of fleet-wide crash-respawning straight back into the limit. Gated by ROBOCO_OVERLOAD_BREAK_ENABLED (default-on).
• Gateway-health recovery closes a blind spot in the stale-claim reaper: the heartbeat is bumped only by gateway verbs, so a broken-but-alive agent (a corrupted /app/.venv so no gateway tool imports) goes heartbeat-stale yet keeps its container up, and the reaper's live-skip would protect it forever. On a stale-heartbeat live container the reaper now probes the gateway out-of-band (_probe_gateway_health → docker exec the gateway venv imports) and, once broken past ROBOCO_GATEWAY_HEALTH_GRACE_SECONDS (a transient probe miss is tolerated), kills + evicts it (_maybe_recover_broken_gateway) so it falls through to release + respawn; healthy or inconclusive probes spare it. Gated by ROBOCO_GATEWAY_HEALTH_ENABLED (default-on). It is the third leg beside the shipped bash-guard /app block (prevents the self-corruption) and the reaper Docker-liveness fallback (stops over-reaping live containers). The bash-guard hook also denies raw uv run / uv pip / uv lock/add/remove, pip/pip3 install/uninstall, conda install/create/run, and poetry run/install/add whenever a Makefile is present in the workspace, remediating to make quality/gate/lint/test instead (a Makefile-less project is unaffected); the grok path mirrors this with a native --deny rule set (_RAW_PM_DENY) that nudges the model back to make without canceling the run.
• Tool-call budget. A per-session counter (docker/scripts/post-tool-budget-hook.sh → the in-container SDK server) warns an agent at 100 tool calls and halts (auto-substitutes, releasing the task) at 300 (BudgetPolicy.tool_call_warn_at / _halt_at, roboco/foundation/policy/agent_loop.py; env overrides ROBOCO_AGENT_TOOL_CALL_WARN / _HALT). Raised from a 150 hard cap, which repeatedly halted legitimate multi-file work mid-task. A same-window loop detector (same tool + args repeated past ROBOCO_AGENT_LOOP_THRESHOLD) is a separate, tighter check that can deny the repeating call before the budget cap is ever reached.
• PM coordinator concurrency. A Main / Cell PM plans and delegates many root tasks in parallel — the actual work then runs in the delegated children/cells, not in the PM's own hands. The claim-time concurrency guards that keep a developer to one task at a time (already_active / paused, in roboco/services/gateway/claim_guards.py) are therefore skipped for the coordinator PM roles (_COORDINATOR_ROLES = {main_pm, cell_pm}, consulted in _run_claim_guards); only a genuine upstream sequence dependency (unmet_dependency, which parks the task back to pending) holds a PM's root back. Without this a single PM that claimed one root could never plan a second — it thrashed between its claimed roots and respawned forever, burning tokens for zero progress (the live i_am_idle-auto-paused-umbrella deadlock). The paused guard also excludes the target task itself, so a PM re-entering its own paused umbrella never self-blocks.
• Orchestrator runtime-state durability. The PM-respawn loop breaker (_pm_respawn_tracker, the (agent_slug, task_id) → strike-count circuit breaker) is DB-durable via the respawn_tracker table (migration 051): each gate mutation write-throughs fire-and-forget on the _bg_tasks set (_schedule_respawn_persist → _persist_respawn_record), and restore_respawn_tracker() repopulates it at start(), validating each row against live tasks (terminal/missing rows are evicted). Kept only in memory it reset to count=1 on every restart and re-burned the whole strike threshold (4 spawns) against a still-wedged task. It mirrors the WaitingRecordTable / restore_waiting_records pattern: best-effort (a DB hiccup degrades to in-memory-only — it can only ever suppress a spawn, never manufacture one) and inert when the table is empty. The companion _instances registry is reconciled-from-Docker (not persisted) at startup via _readopt_running_agents, so the reaper's liveness path and the spawn gate's _is_agent_active check see surviving containers immediately after a restart.
• Token usage is captured per agent session from the Claude Code transcript via the SDK server's /usage/sync (hook → orchestrator finalize → agent_spawn_sessions → daily_usage_rollups → dashboard). Cost uses provider-aware pricing in roboco/billing/pricing.py (Anthropic priced; local/Ollama intentionally $0). The token sweep also publishes USAGE_SNAPSHOT to /ws/system, so the dashboard's "Token Usage & Cost" panel updates live and falls back to HTTP polling when the stream is down.
• Delivery observability (the panel's Metrics → "Delivery" tab) shows how work flows, computed by MetricsService from data already captured — no new feature flag. Per-stage cycle time and the bottleneck distribution are reconstructed from the audit_log transition journey (each generic task.<status> event marks entry into a status; the named task.qa_fail/task.pr_fail events are excluded from the reconstruction). Rework rate reads tasks.revision_count — incremented once per transition into needs_revision at the single chokepoint TaskService._emit_status_transition_audit — and attributes each bounce to the QA / PR-reviewer via those named audit events; rework cost joins agent_spawn_sessions.task_id. Read-only endpoints: /dashboard/metrics/{cycle-time,bottlenecks,rework,scorecard/agent/{id},scorecard/team/{team}}.

Startup Sequence

The startup order is critical due to dependencies:

postgres ──┐
redis ─────┼──> ollama ──> ollama-init ──> orchestrator ──> panel ──> nginx
           │        │            │
           │        │            └── Pulls qwen3-embedding:0.6b, glm-5.2:cloud
           │        └── Healthcheck: ollama list
           └── Healthcheck: pg_isready, redis-cli ping

Important timing notes:

1. ollama-init pulls models (~30s for embedding model, ~2min for LLM)
2. Orchestrator waits for models before starting
3. FastAPI lifespan indexes documents using Ollama (~30-60s)
4. Orchestrator polls /health until API is ready before starting dispatcher
5. After orchestrator is up, panel (Next.js) builds/starts, then nginx

Database migrations

Schema changes ship as Alembic migrations under alembic/versions/. Run:

docker compose exec orchestrator alembic upgrade head

after pulling any change that adds a new migration.

Ollama Configuration

Ollama provides two APIs:

• /v1/* - OpenAI-compatible API (for LLM chat/completion)
• /api/* - Native Ollama API (for embeddings, model management)

The embedder uses /api/embed endpoint with the qwen3-embedding:0.6b model.

Environment variables for Docker:

ROBOCO_LOCAL_LLM_BASE_URL=http://roboco-ollama:11434/v1    # OpenAI-compat
ROBOCO_OLLAMA_BASE_URL=http://roboco-ollama:11434          # Native API

Common Issues

Symptom	Cause	Fix
404 /api/embed	Model not pulled	Check docker logs roboco-ollama-init
All connection attempts failed	API not ready	Orchestrator starts before FastAPI lifespan completes
Healthcheck failing	Wrong endpoint	Use ollama list not curl

Blueprint Reference

The organizational structure, communication matrix, role descriptions, and access-control model are documented inline above and in the user-facing documentation site at docs.roboco.tech (the roboco-website repo — Next.js MDX, the canonical docs site as of the 2026-07-03 docs-site split: docs/internal/specs/2026-07-03-docs-site-split.md). This repo's old MkDocs-built user tree is gone; .github/workflows/docs.yml now only deploys the committed docs-redirects/ stubs (meta-refresh + canonical) so every URL the old Pages site published keeps resolving, to docs.roboco.tech. docs/rag/ remains the agent-facing RAG corpus (never published); docs/map/ is the agent-facing exhaustive codebase map — both directories are auto-indexed into the KB at startup and re-indexed periodically on file changes (OptimalService.AUTO_INDEX_DIRS, roboco/services/optimal.py), so docs/map/*.md is roboco_kb_search-able the same as docs/rag/*.md; docs/internal/ holds specs and working notes; the old root usage.md / deployment.md now link straight to docs.roboco.tech.