skills/docs/requirements/003-operator-workbench.md

003 - Operator Workbench

User Story

As the operator of many parallel agents, I want to handle every open task, review, plan, branch gate and resource figure from one simple, interactive Agent Orchestrator, and agents that commit through fast deterministic hooks instead of skipping them, so that I steer the work by drag and drop, see what changed and what it costs, and a gate means something again.

Decisions (operator-confirmed 2026-11-11; do not re-litigate)

1. One document: the whole package lives here as work packages W1 to W6. Rejected: one document per feature.
2. Operator tasks next to Tasks: the Inbox entry leaves the top navigation and the Stream; the Tasks entry carries the count of open operator tasks; the Tasks filter "Waits on Operator" shows them as Stream cards with checkboxes and the bulk bar. The Stream keeps its operator cards with their actions. Rejected: a separate Operator tab, a Stream without operator rows.
3. Diff preview: every review card shows its diff expanded; the requesting agent's script ships it with the review (the hub reads no git, 001); one block per file, a file over 400 changed lines collapsed, 2 MiB cap with the rest listed by stat; lines MEDUSA's secret rules match are masked. Rejected: the hub reads git. Every Ask for a git commit shows the staged diff the same way (with -a or --all the diff against HEAD); the permission hook on the host attaches it (operator order 2026-11-11).
4. Inline feedback: selected lines of a diff or a command go back to the agent as one radio post with path, line range, quote and text, through the right-click menu, the key f or a button at the selection.
5. Kanban: columns Waiting, Running and Done; Blocked and Stopped become labels; operator/* rows stay off the board; swimlanes P1, P2, P3, P4+ and Unpinned (by WSJF), collapsible; Done older than 24 h hidden by default.
6. Lines: solid arrows are after dependencies, several into one card; one dashed line runs through the cards holding a live queue entry, in queue order. Rejected: rank lines per lane, dependencies only.
7. Drag and drop: card to column = status, to lane = priority pin, handle onto a card = after; a click on an arrow removes it; a click on a card opens its popup. Moves are staged, shown at once and applied with one passkey; each affected agent gets a post. Rejected: a passkey per move, no passkey.
8. Dependencies are enforced: the queue holds a task until its after tasks are done, and the rank follows them. Rejected: display only, warning only.
9. Forecast: two lines in distinct colours, the finish at fixed scope and the finish at growing scope (done trend meets scope trend); ∞ when never reached. Scope excludes operator/*; a task unchanged for 3 days is labelled stale and counted apart. Rejected: count everything, only drop operator rows.
10. Clean all merged: dry run, one passkey, signed job. Local branches merged by ancestry and without a remote branch need no token; remote branches and squash-merge candidates need the GitHub token, stored through an operator row. Rejected: wait for the token, ancestry for remotes.
11. Ancestry: Artifacts and Agents get a family tree (generations top down) in the slot of today's Tree view. A branch may have several parents; parents are recorded at creation (post-checkout hook), older branches are derived and marked derived, and the operator corrects them by drag and drop. Rejected: derivation only, manual only.
12. Gates: a level (none < quick < test < quality-high < e2e) per branch and action (commit, merge, push, pr), inherited from all ancestors, the strictest wins, an own rule wins over all; kept in the local database ~/.local/state/agents-council/gates.db (the council root lives in the tmpfs /tmp and loses it at reboot) that agents read through gates.py; set in every Artifacts view. Rejected: a committed .gates.yml, repo plus local.
13. Hooks with receipts: pre-commit runs only quick checks of the staged files (< 30 s); heavy gates run through the queue and on green write a receipt (tree sha of the tested content, level, log); commit-msg, pre-merge-commit and pre-push only compare the receipt with the resolved level (< 1 s). --no-verify only on the operator's word for that commit. Core's hooks change only in a core PR agreed with Experiment and Main. Rejected: heavy gates at pre-push, skills-side checks with --no-verify.
14. Resources: a host unit samples every 60 s without any LLM call: disks per mount, CPU, RAM, swap, load, GPU and VRAM (nvidia-smi only while the dGPU is awake, else asleep), the queue; tokens per agent and model from the transcripts' usage fields. 7 days at 1 min, 90 days at 15 min. Replaces 001 S7.
15. Simplicity: icons, counts and names instead of text; every action is reachable in the GUI.
16. Delivery: one subtree feature/operator-workbench with split worktrees, at most 4 subagents at a time on W1 to W4 and W6, W5 serially in the requesting agent with Experiment; one gate (make test, e2e Chromium and Firefox at 1920, 1366 and 390 px, MEDUSA, 90/5); master only on the operator's word. Rejected: 8 in parallel, serial without subagents.
17. Speech bubbles: one toolbar icon switches speech bubbles on in every view that shows agents. The agent being read aloud gets the largest bubble, its words appear one by one in time with the audio; when it ends the bubble fades while the next one grows and is read. Waiting messages show a small … bubble, the newest smallest, steps in between. Without TTS the bubbles run at reading pace. Font: vendored Comic Neue (SIL OFL 1.1). Rejected: a ticker, the full text with a karaoke mark, bubbles only with audio, system fonts only, a switch only in the settings, a caption under the speaker only.

Approach

flowchart TD
    subgraph P["🧭 0 · Preparation"]
        P1["📋 Write requirement"] --> P2{"✅ Operator approves?"}
        P2 -- "✏️ corrections" --> P1
    end
    P2 -- "🤖 yes" --> C1
    subgraph C["📐 1 · Contracts"]
        C1["🗄️ gates.db schema, staged-change job, diff payload, sampler files"] --> C2["🔴 Red tests per work package"]
    end
    C2 --> W1A & W2A & W3A & W4A & W5A & W6A
    subgraph W1["📥 W1 · Operator tasks"]
        W1A["🛠️ Nav badge, Waits on Operator cards, diff, feedback"] --> W1B{"🧪 Green?"}
        W1B -- "🔴 fix" --> W1A
    end
    subgraph W2["🗂️ W2 · Kanban and forecast"]
        W2A["🛠️ Lanes, labels, drag and drop, arrows, popup, two forecasts, stale"] --> W2B{"🧪 Green?"}
        W2B -- "🔴 fix" --> W2A
    end
    subgraph W3["🌳 W3 · Artifacts"]
        W3A["🛠️ Clean all merged, ancestry views, gate icons"] --> W3B{"🧪 Green?"}
        W3B -- "🔴 fix" --> W3A
    end
    subgraph W4["📈 W4 · Resources"]
        W4A["🛠️ Sampler unit, token parser, view"] --> W4B{"🧪 Green?"}
        W4B -- "🔴 fix" --> W4A
    end
    subgraph W5["🪝 W5 · Gates, receipts, hooks"]
        W5A["🛠️ gates.py, receipts, hooks, queue after-wait"] --> W5B{"🤝 Experiment agrees?"}
        W5B -- "✏️ changes" --> W5A
    end
    subgraph W6["💬 W6 · Speech bubbles"]
        W6A["🛠️ Bubble layer, anchors per view, word reveal, queue sizes"] --> W6B{"🧪 Green?"}
        W6B -- "🔴 fix" --> W6A
    end
    W1B & W2B & W3B & W4B & W6B -- "🟢" --> U1
    W5B -- "👍" --> U1
    subgraph U["🔀 2 · Unify"]
        U1["🔀 Merge splits into the subtree"] --> U2{"🧪 Gate: make test, e2e x3, MEDUSA, 90/5"}
        U2 -- "🔴 fix" --> U1
        U2 -- "🟢" --> U3["📸 Screenshots 1920 / 1366 / 390"]
        U3 --> UF{"💬 Operator feedback?"}
        UF -- "✏️ changes" --> U1
    end
    UF -- "👍 commit word" --> D1["🏁 Merge to master, install row, core PR proposal"]

Acceptance Criteria

W1 Operator tasks

• The top navigation has no Inbox entry; the Tasks entry shows the count of waiting, unsnoozed operator tasks, hidden at 0.
• The Stream has no inbox button; #stream/inbox opens #tasks/operator.
• #tasks/operator shows each operator task as a Stream card (command, directory, reason, run, deny, copy, snooze, pin) with a checkbox; the bulk bar acts on the checked cards.
• The Stream keeps its operator cards with their actions.
• The bulk approve counts and approves every checked card, asks, reviews and operator commands alike, with one passkey.
• Approving or denying an Ask in the hub also settles the agent's native permission dialog where the runtime allows it (the permission hook waits for the hub's decision); where it does not, the limit is recorded here.
• A review card shows its diff expanded: one unified block per file, additions and deletions coloured, a file over 400 changed lines collapsed, a binary file named only.
• The review request of approval.py (kvb-git-diff) carries git diff --cached of the exact staged tree; past 2 MiB the rest is listed per file with its stat.
• An Ask for a git commit carries the staged diff of its working directory (with -a or --all the diff against HEAD), attached by permission_hook.py, and shows it like a review, feedback included.
• A diff line MEDUSA's secret rules match is shown masked.
• Selecting lines in a diff or a command and choosing Feedback (right-click menu, key f, or the button at the selection) posts one radio post to the requesting agent with path, line range, quote and text; the feedback shows under the card.

W2 Kanban

• Columns Waiting, Running and Done; no Blocked or Stopped column.
• A blocked task carries a red Blocked label, a stopped one a grey Stopped label in Done; operator/* rows are not on the board.
• Swimlanes P1, P2, P3, P4+ and Unpinned, collapsible, Unpinned sorted by WSJF rank; Done cards older than 24 h hidden until shown.
• Each after dependency is a solid arrow into the dependent card, several per card allowed; the cards holding a live queue entry are joined by one dashed line in queue order.
• Dragging a card to a column stages a status, to a lane a pin (P4+ the lowest free pin from 4, Unpinned none), its handle onto a card an after; a click on an arrow stages its removal; every move is also in the card's keyboard menu.
• Staged moves show at once as pending; "Apply n changes" signs them with one passkey; the host executor applies them through rasci.py, refuses a cycle or a done with an open key result, and the card shows why.
• Each affected agent receives one post listing the operator's changes to its rows.
• A click on a card opens its detail popup.

W2 Forecast

• The burn chart draws, in distinct colours with a legend, the finish at fixed scope and the finish at growing scope, each ending at its date; a line never reached shows ∞.
• Scope excludes operator/*; a task without a register change for 3 days carries a Stale label, is counted apart and can be stopped from the board.

W3 Artifacts

• "Clean all merged" shows the gc dry run of every merged-clean item; one passkey runs the signed job.
• Without a GitHub token, local branches merged by ancestry into the default branch and without a remote branch can be deleted; the others show "token needed", and an operator row stores the token.
• Artifacts and Agents show Ancestry in the Tree slot: generations top down, several parents per node; a derived parent edge is dashed.
• Dragging a branch onto another stages a parent edge, applied with the board's passkey batch.
• Agents' Ancestry shows operator, chair, sessions and subagents.
• Every Artifacts view shows each branch's effective gate level per action as an icon (inherited ones faint, source in the tooltip) and lets the operator set a rule, signed.

W5 Gates, receipts and hooks

• gates.py keeps rules, parents and receipts in ~/.local/state/agents-council/gates.db.
• gates.py resolve --repo R --branch B --action A prints the level and its source: the branch's own rule, else the strictest resolved level of all ancestors, else none.
• The post-checkout hook records as parents every local branch whose tip equals the new branch's start commit; gates.py parents derive adds derived parents for the others.
• A green queue gate writes a receipt: repo, tree sha of the tested content (tracked, staged, unstaged, untracked, via a temporary index), level, log, time.
• gates.py hooks install --repo R installs pre-commit (quick checks of the staged files, under 30 s on this repository), commit-msg, pre-merge-commit, pre-push and post-checkout.
• commit-msg, pre-merge-commit and pre-push pass when a receipt for the resulting tree meets the resolved level, else refuse with the queue.py hold command that produces it; each check stays under 1 s.
• queue.py hold for a task whose after tasks are not all done waits with waits for <task>; the register rank places a task after its after tasks.
• The commit skills commit through the hooks; --no-verify only on the operator's word for that commit.
• Experiment's and Main's answer on core's hooks is recorded here; core's .pre-commit-config.yaml changes only in a core PR.

W4 Resources

• resources.py sample, run every 60 s by a user timer that make orchestrator-install enables, appends one row: used and total per mount, CPU, RAM and swap percent, load, GPU utilization and VRAM per GPU, waiting and active queue jobs.
• An NVIDIA GPU whose PCI runtime_status is not active is recorded as asleep without running nvidia-smi.
• resources.py tokens adds input, output, cache-read and cache-write tokens per agent and model from transcript usage fields since the last byte offset; no sampler or parser calls an LLM.
• Rows older than 7 days fold into 15-minute means; means older than 90 days are dropped.
• The Resources entry shows on one time axis disks, CPU, RAM, swap, GPU, VRAM and stacked tokens per agent; bands mark idle (< 30 %) and saturated (> 90 %); a marker flags spans where jobs waited while CPU and RAM stayed under 50 %; the view reads only the sampler files.
• 001 S7 points to this section.

Contracts

The work packages meet only through these interfaces:

• Gates: skills/kvb-check-gate/scripts/gates.py (its docstring is the reference). The hub reads gates.py show --json; a GUI change is a signed job whose argv is rule set|drop or parents add|drop (signing.gate_argv), run by the host runner with --gates.
• Register: the board's signed task changes (signing.task_argv) accept set <task> with exactly one of --status <s>, --after <t>, --drop-after <t>, --prio <n> or --unpin; every changed row carries updated (ISO time), which Stale reads.
• Review diff: the review request of approval.py gains diff, a list of {path, status, additions, deletions, patch, masked}: status one of A, M, D, R or B (binary), patch the unified text (empty for binary files and past the 2 MiB cap), masked the line numbers shown masked. An Ask for a git commit carries the same diff from permission_hook.py.
• Feedback: a feedback is a message to the requesting agent through the existing signed message flow, text Feedback on <ref> <path>:<from>-<to>: "<quote>" <text>.
• Resources: the host unit writes samples.jsonl ({t, disks: [{mount, used, total}], cpu, ram, swap, load, gpus: [{name, util, vram_used, vram_total} | {name, asleep: true}], queue: {waiting, active}}), tokens.jsonl ({t, agent, model, input, output, cache_read, cache_write}, t the hour) and offsets.json under ~/.local/state/agents-council/resources/.
• Mounts: the hub mounts ~/.local/state/agents-council read-only and opens gates.db read-only.

W6 Speech bubbles

• A bi-chat-quote toolbar icon (title and aria-label "Speech bubbles") switches the bubbles on and off for every view that shows agents (Agents graph, 3D, Hierarchy, Radio, Stream); the choice is kept in the hub settings and survives a reload.
• One overlay layer (fixed, pointer-events: none) draws all bubbles; a DOM view anchors a bubble at the visible [data-face] element of its agent, the 3D view projects the agent's node through the camera on every frame; an agent without an anchor in the active view speaks from a caption bar at the bottom.
• The bubble of speech.current is the largest (scale 1) and shows its line word by word, word i of n at i/n of buffer.duration; text beyond 6 lines scrolls up inside the bubble. On ended it fades out within 400 ms while the next item grows to scale 1 and starts.
• Every item of speech.pending shows a … bubble at its agent, scaled by queue position: current 1, then 0.8, 0.65, at least 0.5, so the newest is the smallest; an agent with several waiting items shows one bubble at the size of its earliest.
• With speech off, TTS unavailable or muted, the same rows run through the same queue timed at 180 words per minute, at least 1.5 s each.
• Bubble text uses Comic Neue as a vendored woff2 with its SIL OFL 1.1 text in orchestrator/vendor/, stack "Comic Neue", "Comic Sans MS", cursive; no external font request, the CSP stays unchanged.
• Stop speaking clears every bubble at once; switching the bubbles off leaves speech playback unchanged; prefers-reduced-motion drops the scaling and scrolling animation.
• Bubble text is set as text content, never as HTML.

Simplicity

• Every new control is a Bootstrap Icon with title and aria-label; no new visible text beyond counts and names.

Tests

• Unit:
  • Board staging, lanes and refusals (cycle, open key result); forecast fixed, growing and never; stale; scope without operator/*.
  • Gates resolve (own rule, strictest of several ancestors, none); parents derive; receipt tree sha with unstaged and untracked files; hook pass and refuse; queue wait on after.
  • Resources sample parsing on fixtures (df, meminfo, nvidia-smi, asleep GPU); token offsets; retention fold; diff cap and masking; feedback payload.
  • Bubble schedule: scale per queue position, word reveal times from a duration, reading-pace duration, one bubble per agent.
• Integration:
  • A scratch repository with installed hooks refuses a commit without a receipt and passes it after a queue gate; refuses a merge below the parent's level; post-checkout records parents.
  • The host executor applies a signed board batch to a scratch register and refuses a forged one; deletes a local merged branch without a token and refuses a remote one.
  • The sampler writes rows in a scratch HOME.
• E2E, headless Chromium and Firefox at 1920, 1366 and 390 px:
  • Tasks badge, no Inbox entry, operator cards with bulk actions, review diff expanded, feedback by right-click and f reaching the radio store.
  • Kanban lanes, no Blocked or Stopped column, drags to column, lane and dependency, Apply with a test passkey, arrows and the dashed queue line, card popup; forecast two lines and ∞.
  • Artifacts clean-all dry run, Ancestry in both tabs, a gate set; Resources charts; no page scrollbar.
  • Bubbles on: two radio rows without TTS show the first agent's bubble largest with its words appearing, the second as a smaller …; after the first ends the second grows; the setting survives a reload; off hides the layer.