Wiki · Several agents, one repository

Kanban agent task

A unit of work on a board that an agent can pick up on its own, work in an isolated checkout, and hand back with evidence. It differs from an ordinary ticket in that the acceptance criteria have to be machine-checkable, not just human-readable.

A board of tasks is an old idea. What changes when the worker is an agent is that the writing of the task stops being administrative overhead and becomes the work, because the agent will do exactly what the card says, including the parts you left ambiguous.

What a card has to carry

The third one is the one that gets skipped and the one that matters. A task without a check is a task whose completion is a matter of opinion, and an agent will always have the more generous opinion.

Delivery is committed work

"Implemented" and "committed" are different claims, and only the second can be reviewed. A task that reaches review with an uncommitted working tree is not ready, it is a description of something that happened on a machine.

The corollary is that the agent should move its own card to review. It is the only party that knows when it is finished, while a human decides what happens next. See landing vs approving.

Subtasks are a checklist, not a queue

Splitting a task into subtasks is a way to structure one piece of work. It is not a way to defer scope: work that turns out to be a different job belongs in a new top-level task, not as an open child of the one being delivered. A task with open children cannot honestly be accepted.

See also

What points here