Pipeline

Thirteen states. Seven agents. One pipeline.

The colony has roles. Mayor (sprint master) sets the agenda. Surveyor (analyzer) walks the ground. Architect (planner) drafts. Builder (developer) builds. Inspector (reviewer) inspects. Marshal (merger) merges. Sentinel (monitor) watches. Each agent owns one transition; Postgres holds the state; if a worker dies, the next picks up where the issue sits in the state machine, not in someone’s head.

Two weeks to first merged PR.

The seven

One agent. One job. One transition owned.

No agent is a generalist. Each owns one state transition and the evidence that justifies it. Specialization is the source of reliability.

01

Mayor

Decides what to work on, and in what order.

Reads the backlog, applies the sprint policy (priority, dependency, capacity), and stages issues for the rest of the pipeline. The Mayor sets the daily agenda for the colony. Owns the queue → staged transition.

02

Surveyor

Reads the issue, the repo, and the conventions.

Walks the codebase. Resolves the issue to a concrete problem — affected files, existing patterns, and the unknowns the Architect needs answered before drafting. Owns staged → analyzed.

03

Architect

Lays out the change before code is written.

Produces a structured change plan — files touched, functions modified, tests added — and validates feasibility against the analysis. Owns analyzed → planned.

04

Builder

Writes the code.

Implements the Architect’s plan. Runs tests. Opens the pull request with evidence (test output, diff summary, files touched). Owns planned → in_review.

05

Inspector

Catches what would have been merged anyway.

Reviews the diff against your conventions, the plan, and the evidence. Returns to the Builder for rework if the evidence doesn’t hold. Owns in_review → ready_to_merge.

06

Marshal

Respects the human-defined gate.

Enforces branch protection. Honors required reviews, status checks, code-owner approvals. Never elevates its own permissions. Owns ready_to_merge → merged.

07

Sentinel

Watches the pipeline itself.

Tracks throughput, cost, and failure patterns. Surfaces issues the other agents can’t see because they only know their lane. Owns merged → monitoring → closed.

The thirteen states

An issue’s position is never ambiguous.

Every issue is in exactly one state, with a timestamp for the transition and the agent that produced it.

# State Owned by Meaning
01intakequeueIssue arrived in the backlog.
02triagedMayorSelected for work, priority set.
03analyzingSurveyorReading repo, identifying scope.
04analyzedgateAnalysis complete; awaiting Architect.
05planningArchitectDrafting the change plan.
06plannedgatePlan validated; awaiting capacity.
07stagedqueueIn the Builder queue.
08developingBuilderCode is being written.
09in_reviewInspectorPR open, Inspector agent reading the diff.
10ready_to_mergegateAll checks green; awaiting human or Marshal.
11mergedMarshalMerged to main branch.
12monitoringSentinelPost-merge observation window.
13closedSentinelIssue closed, retained in archive.

See the pipeline running on your work.

A pilot puts the whole thing on a slice of your repos. Two weeks to first merged PR.