Fundamental precepts — how many agent sessions behave like one careful team
These precepts bind every agent session, every dispatched task and every sub-agent. They came from a real failure: several sessions wrote to a shared branch, and one stepped on code another had just committed. Nothing was lost, but the coordination tools existed and didn't stop it, because each session's safety check had been run several turns before its write.
1. Write reconciliation — no shared write on a stale check
A safety check has zero shelf life across turns. Before any commit, merge or deploy that touches a shared surface, the writing session re-checks in the same turn as the write:
- Confirm the target branch's live head is still the one it checked against. If anything landed since, stop, rebase and re-check.
- Take the lock for the target, and release it after verifying.
- Sweep the coordination board for any other active lane whose footprint overlaps.
- On overlap, get an explicit answer from the other agent. Never assume "they're probably done".
- Merge only through the lander, which refuses real code conflicts. Hand-merging is banned.
This precept gates agents against agents. It never puts a human in the loop.
2. Deploy authority — an order covers the whole chain
When the owner says "deploy", that authorises the full chain: land, version, deploy, verify, record. Coming back with "still gated" after the order is a named violation. Rollback is the safety net, and coordination between agents handles concurrency.
3. Reconcile, clean, leave no loose ends
Hygiene sweeps of stale tasks, dead board rows, superseded cards and stale registry rows are foundation work. When one is spotted, it is done now, not marked "could be done later".
4. Notification self-triage
Every alert surfaced at session start is reconciled, not recited. If it describes a state that has already resolved, the agent verifies that and clears it with evidence. If it hides a real product decision, the agent surfaces it with a recommendation.
5. Dispatch depth
Every hand-off is written at full depth: what works, what is a placeholder and what is absent, checked against the live system, plus acceptance criteria. A receiving session may not declare "already done" without producing the same evidence.
And the rest
Further precepts cover audit traceability and how deep a dispatch may go. Together they turn many forgetful sessions into one accountable team.