Where work should continue
Overlap, active workstreams, project fit, sequencing and handoffs.
Example: “Two sessions claim the same delivery. Which one continues, and who receives the handoff?”
Human program manager · day one
Two brains. One honest program.
Your job is not to tour every subsystem. It is to keep work moving in the right place, make operator decisions cheap, and stop optimistic status from becoming program truth.
Where work belongs
Subsystem ownership, governing documents, required sources and architecture drift risk.
Example: “Does this podcast capability extend an existing subsystem, and which authority governs it?”
01 · Decide from state
Where the program actually is
1 of 12 units has a human-accepted artifact. Start at the Status Hub; do not reproduce its snapshot in a side document.
The acceptance ladder is ABSENT → RESEARCHED → SPECCED → CONFIG-EXISTS → CODE-WIRED → EXECUTED-REAL → PROVEN-AT-BAR. A green gate can establish structural clarity. It cannot prove that a customer artifact was generated, byte-verified, and accepted by a human.
02 · Read the tracker honestly
Check last_updated before status
artifacts/coordination/ACTIVE_WORKSTREAMS.tsv is the coordination surface. The supplied status-count export totals 330 rows even though the accompanying prose says 331. Its live-row extract contains 53 active/in_progress rows; 26 are older than 30 days at the 2026-08-09 snapshot. Do not replace those measured values with the rough “about 51 stale” claim.
Data defect:
completed (156) and complete (5) are two spellings of one conceptual state. Keep both visible until the source is corrected.03 · Batch operator decisions
Escalate choices, not uncertainty
Agents decide in-envelope
Log the decision and continue when governing evidence gives a clear default.
Operator tier is narrow
Legal, financial, brand identity, product scope, taste, or a genuine trade-off with no clear default.
Use ratifiable questions
Format open calls as Q-<TAG>-NN, each with a recommended default. The operator can answer: “go with defaults except Q-X = b.”
Land rulings in artifacts/coordination/operator_decisions_log.tsv.
04 · Enforce claim discipline
Translate vague green into exact evidence
| Unsafe claim | Correct program language |
|---|---|
| “Podcast is active.” | podcast_pipeline is proposed; it is not active wiring. |
| “Recommendations is operational.” | recommendations is backlog in the supplied authority map. |
| “Social checks pass.” | Name every check. Gate 49 currently FAILS with 1,329 verbatim duplicates across the CJK social banks. |
| “We have about 1,519 books.” | We have approximately 1,519 listings and approximately 89 tracked EPUBs. Ask which object the claim means. |
| “The cover system works.” | The current board says naming is EXECUTED-REAL and covers are CODE-WIRED; a real accepted cover is a higher claim. |
Never accept “done” without a named acceptance layer. Never accept “all checks pass” without the checks and their individual states.
05 · Prevent collisions
One writer at a time on hot files
docs/PROGRAM_STATE.mdartifacts/coordination/ACTIVE_WORKSTREAMS.tsvartifacts/coordination/operator_decisions_log.tsvdocs/PEARL_ARCHITECT_STATE.mdDATA_DICTIONARY.tsv06 · Know the physical substrate
Scale without false equivalence
23,853
Atom CANONICAL.txt files
272 + 39
Practice items + somatic anchors
9 / 20,041
Social banks / rows
~1,519 / ~89
Listings / tracked EPUBs
23 vs 19
The supplied authority map contains 23 rows; the substrate summary reports 19 subsystems. Reconcile live.
69
Architecture caps: 43 ACTIVE, 4 BLOCKED, 3 PROPOSED
07 · First week
Five tasks that teach the operating system
1
Interrogate the hub. Write down three numbers or claims you do not believe and why.
2
Verify one claim against its source. Record the exact object counted and the acceptance layer.
3
Correct one stale workstream row. Confirm its owner, evidence, next owner and honest status before changing it.
4
Shadow one real pipeline run. Follow a tech lead from command through byte evidence and human review; note where the tracker lags reality.
5
Bring one batched
Q- set. Include recommended defaults and land the rulings in the operator decision log.