Why work begins with an artifact

A request is evidence that work may exist. It is not yet the durable definition of that work. work-intake separates four concerns that otherwise collapse into one chat turn: source material, canonical product meaning, workspace lifecycle, and execution.

source request → canonical artifact → workspace membership → processor

The artifact carries meaning

An intent, brief, spec, or defect record survives a session and can be reviewed without replaying the original message. The artifact kind reflects altitude: an opportunity is not forced into a feature spec, and a multi-feature outcome is not compressed into one oversized build contract.

This also puts untrusted source material at a boundary. Intake preserves a safe locator and revision while copying only the bounded product facts needed by the artifact. Embedded source instructions never become authority.

Workspace state carries lifecycle

workspace.toml says where an artifact sits in the lifecycle and what it needs. It does not replace the artifact. Draft membership is deliberately non-dispatchable, so remembering an idea cannot silently start implementation.

Materialization happens before registration. That order prevents the workspace from pointing at a file that does not exist. Processor dispatch comes last, only after both states are durable.

Processors retain their jobs

Intake decides the route, not the details of every downstream workflow. author-delivery-brief create writes a Draft brief, continue handles the human Ready gate and confirmed slice cuts, new-spec owns the feature contract, and bug-fix owns regression diagnosis. workspace-status remains the read-side authority.

This keeps one front door without creating one all-powerful skill. Each processor can enforce its own contract, while intake makes the handoff explicit and deterministic.

Human decisions remain visible

The system can classify clear evidence, but it cannot decide that ambiguous work is ready, choose a brief slice, approve a spec, or change an artifact’s authority on the user’s behalf. Those decisions are gates because they change what can run.

For the procedure, see Start or remember work without choosing a skill. For exact routes and limits, see Work-intake routing and lifecycle.