Boards and Agents
Which boards an agent reads and works, what it sees at the start of each turn, how it claims and closes tasks, what a person's card means to it, and the From content mark.
Once Boards are on, an agent reads and works the boards its work belongs to. Nothing is handed to it in plain chat: a board comes with the workflow or schedule it runs in, or with a shared board's list.
The agent's Boards section
Each agent's setup has a Boards section (The boards it reads and works):
- The board of the workflow or schedule it runs in, on unless you turn it off. In a workflow it reads and works that workflow's board; run by a schedule, that schedule's. Cards last across runs, and this run's come first.
- Shared boards: the shared boards whose lists name this agent, or a workflow or schedule that runs it. You add it on the board's own list, not here; at most 3 are used.
What the agent sees and does
At the start of each turn the agent is given a short digest of the open cards on its boards, up to 40 lines, the current run's cards and a person's open tasks first.
It works the cards with five tools: board_list and board_read to look, board_add to add a card, board_claim to take a task, and board_update to note progress or close a card with its result. The engine keeps track of which version of a card the agent saw, so the agent never has to.
- A claim lasts 10 minutes and is renewed while the agent works. If its run stops, the claim lapses and the task is open again for the next one.
- A person's card is an instruction. On a schedule's board, a person's open tasks are the agent's to-do list: each firing reads them first and closes each one it did.
- On a board it may only add to, the agent adds cards and never closes them; the card it added is someone else's to work.
- Two agents can't claim one task: a claim is all or nothing.
- A task left claimed is said. Near the end of its turn an agent is told what it still holds, so it closes it. A task still claimed when the turn ends goes back to Open, and the turn says so in a note under its answer, in chat and on a run's page, and again when the conversation is reopened: Bug fixer left card_… (key BUG-201) "Fix login" claimed without closing it; it goes back to Open as the turn ends. A schedule's firing says it in its conversation.
The From content mark
A card or note written by an agent that had read outside content (a web page, an email, a tool's result) is marked From content. An agent that later reads it is treated the same way: its words can't unlock a tool that needs approval, and a remember asks first. Your own cards are never marked.
Where boards don't reach
A visitor's turn on the chat widget, a public channel or a phone call gets no board at all. A Team agent's task list is not a board: it is the team's own, kept for that turn, and works with Boards turned off.