ground-game/AGENTS.md

ground-game — Agent Instructions

Repo Identity

Purpose: Product repo for GROUND — A Game of Bonds and Rivalry (DARVO Edition): playtest edition datasets, rules content, and design history for a semi-cooperative conflict card game.

Domain: consumer Repo slug: ground-game Topic ID: 4c2e5315-2cb9-447c-9d16-a39bdb0aabd0 Workplan prefix: GROUND-WP-

---

State Hub Integration

The Custodian State Hub tracks work across all domains. Interact via HTTP REST — there is no MCP server for Codex agents.

Context	URL
Local workstation	http://127.0.0.1:8000
Remote (railiance01, in-cluster)	http://10.43.68.154:8000
Optional local edge relay	http://127.0.0.1:18080

When an operator has enabled the edge relay, set API_BASE to the relay URL. Queueable writes return an explicit queued receipt if the central hub is unreachable. Treat that as pending local evidence, then ask the operator to run statehub outbox status/replay after connectivity returns.

Orient at session start

# Offline brief — works without hub connection
cat .custodian-brief.md

# Active workplans for this domain
curl -s "http://127.0.0.1:8000/workplans/?topic_id=4c2e5315-2cb9-447c-9d16-a39bdb0aabd0&status=active" \
  | python3 -m json.tool

# Check inbox
curl -s "http://127.0.0.1:8000/messages/?to_agent=ground-game&unread_only=true" \
  | python3 -m json.tool

Mark a message read:

curl -s -X PATCH "http://127.0.0.1:8000/messages/<id>/read" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{}'

Log progress (required at session close)

curl -s -X POST http://127.0.0.1:8000/progress/ \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "summary": "what was done",
    "event_type": "note",
    "author": "codex",
    "workplan_id": "<uuid>",
    "task_id": "<uuid>"
  }'

Omit workplan_id / task_id when not applicable.

Update task status

curl -s -X PATCH "http://127.0.0.1:8000/tasks/<task_id>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"status": "progress"}'
# values: wait | todo | progress | done | cancel

Flag a task for human review

curl -s -X PATCH "http://127.0.0.1:8000/tasks/<task_id>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"needs_human": true, "intervention_note": "reason"}'

---

Session Protocol

Start:

1. cat .custodian-brief.md — domain goal and open workplans (offline-safe)
2. Check inbox: GET /messages/?to_agent=ground-game&unread_only=true; mark read
3. Scan workplans: ls workplans/ — note status: ready, active, or blocked files and open tasks
4. Check human-needed tasks: GET /tasks/?needs_human=true

During work:

• Update task statuses in workplan files as tasks progress
• Record significant decisions via POST /decisions/

Close:

1. Update workplan file task statuses to reflect progress
2. If finishing a workplan: hand off residuals as live work records first (intake with origin: residual + origin_ref: <WP-id>, or a next workplan / decision / engagement). Do not park leftovers only in prose or SCOPE.md. Canon: the-custodian/canon/standards/work-record-types_v0.1.md § Residuals.
3. Log: POST /progress/ with a summary of what changed (name handoff ids)
4. After workplan file changes, run:

   statehub fix-consistency
   

   Coding agents should run this directly; ask the operator only if the CLI or State Hub API is unavailable. This syncs task status from files into the hub DB.

---

{CREDENTIAL_ROUTING}

---

Edition & rules variants (composable modules by aspect)

Indexed in editions/catalog.yaml (schema 2).

Doc	Role
editions/CATALOG.md	Selection contract for modules / profiles
editions/ASPECTS.md	Full aspect map (design-space dimensionality)

Layer	What
Baseline	Content package editions/ground-darvo-rN/
Aspect	Orthogonal design dimension (stress routing, end condition, dealing, …)
Module	One choice on one aspect under editions/modules/<aspect>/<slug>/
Profile	Named list of modules (e.g. h2, scoped_plus_attack_soothe)

Select baseline + modules (≤1 per aspect) or a profile. Modules are independent and combinable. Legacy experiments under editions/experiments/ map to profiles — prefer module/profile ids.

Do not silently edit frozen baseline columns (GROUND-WP-0002 T01).

Design memory: history/260807-attack-darvo-stress-design.md, history/260808-h2-scoped-problem-stress.md, history/260808-deal-end-sequences-design.md, history/260808-modular-variants.md.
Simulator-side research: clay-borg research/CB-RES-0010-game-aspects-and-design-space.md.

Workplan Convention (ADR-001)

Work items originate as files in this repo — not in the hub. The hub is a read/cache/index layer that rebuilds from files.

File location: workplans/GROUND-WP-NNNN-<slug>.md

Archived location: finished workplans may move to workplans/archived/YYMMDD-GROUND-WP-NNNN-<slug>.md. The YYMMDD prefix is the completion/archive date; the frontmatter id does not change.

Reports are not workplans. An inbound finding report — clay-borg measured something and told us — is correspondence, not a unit of work. It lives in reports/YYMMDD-<slug>.md with its own id space (GROUND-RPT-NNNN), type: report, status: informational, and extends: GROUND-WP-NNNN naming the workplan it bears on.

It is not registered in State Hub as a workplan and carries no state_hub_workstream_id. Three of them were, which put two files in the GROUND-WP-0002/0003/0005 slots each and made the workplan list read as though it had duplicates. The workplan number space has one file per number; a report borrowing that number is what caused the confusion.

Ad Hoc Tasks: small opportunistic fixes discovered during a session use workplans/ADHOC-YYYY-MM-DD.md with task ids ADHOC-YYYY-MM-DD-T01, etc. Use this only for low-risk work completed directly; create a normal workplan for anything needing analysis, design, approval, dependencies, or multiple phases.

Frontmatter:

---
id: GROUND-WP-NNNN
type: workplan
title: "..."
domain: consumer
repo: ground-game
status: proposed | ready | active | blocked | backlog | finished | archived
owner: codex
topic_slug: ...
created: "YYYY-MM-DD"
updated: "YYYY-MM-DD"
state_hub_workstream_id: "<uuid>"   # fix-consistency — do not edit (legacy field name; workplan UUID)
---

Use proposed for a new draft, ready after review against current repo state, and finished after implementation. stalled and needs_review are derived health labels, not frontmatter statuses.

Terminology: workplan is the fleet term; workstream appears only in legacy API/MCP/frontmatter bridges until STATE-WP-0069 retires them — see the-custodian/canon/standards/workplan-terminology-fleet_v0.1.md.

Task block format (one per ## section):

## Task Title

` ` `task
id: GROUND-WP-NNNN-T01
status: wait | todo | progress | done | cancel
priority: high | medium | low
state_hub_task_id: "<uuid>"         # written by fix-consistency — do not edit
` ` `

Task description text.

Status progression: todo → progress → done; use wait for waiting/blocked work and cancel for stopped work.

Residuals when finishing: actionable leftovers become live work records before status: finished — usually an intake (origin: residual, origin_ref: GROUND-WP-NNNN) or a spawned workplan. Residual is a role, not a kind. Fleet list lives on State Hub, not in SCOPE.md.

To create a new workplan:

1. Write the file following the format above
2. Run statehub fix-consistency locally; ask the operator only if the CLI or State Hub API is unavailable.