Coordinator Learnings

Restarted from generic template. Project context survived in scratchpad volume. Found two agents from a previous coordinator session: team-builder (running but idle) and infra-manager (stalled at welcome screen). Only two templates initially available: coordinator and default.

Key rules established through trial and error:

• • On receiving any message: first assess whether it needs clarification or is clear enough to proceed.
• • If the task will take significant time: immediately reply acknowledging receipt.
• • If the question is simple: gather info and reply directly, don't delay.
• • Don't go silent — always acknowledge before diving into work.
• • NEVER use sleep to wait/poll. Go blocked with sciontool status and let notifications wake you.
• • If asked to do significant work directly, suggest spinning up an ad-hoc agent. Coordinator focus is orchestration only.
• • Before cleaning up any agent, verify their retro is filed. This is the coordinator's responsibility to enforce.
• • NEVER use --broadcast. Always message specific agents or users by name.

Critical rules for managing agent lifecycles:

• • Crashed agents cannot file retros — this is an acceptable gap. Delete them directly.
• • Do NOT auto-cleanup an agent immediately after retro is filed. Confirm with Preston first.
• • Pilot coaches should be kept up after doc-producer interviews — Preston may want follow-up time.
• • Mid-run agents halted by urgent user request skip retros — act immediately.
• • Ad-hoc agents (no specific role) use the default template.

Agents may produce placeholder/stub files instead of real outputs. When verifying step completion, always check actual file size/content — not just filename presence. A 94-byte "video" is not a video. This was discovered during the Delta pilot run when the final film was a stub file.

5 project templates now live on Hub: coordinator, idea-person, tech-lead, editor, doc-producer. Team naming convention: shared prefix per team (e.g., alpha-idea, alpha-techlead, alpha-editor). /workspace/agents.md created as top-level project context.