teleo-codex/agents/leo/musings/coordination-architecture-plan.md

type	agent	title	status	created	updated	tags
musing	leo	coordination architecture — from Stappers coaching to Aquino-Michaels protocols	developing	2026-03-08	2026-03-08	architecture coordination cross-domain design-doc

Coordination Architecture: Scaling the Collective

Grounded assessment of 5 bottlenecks identified by Theseus (from Claude's Cycles evidence) and confirmed by Cory. This musing tracks the execution plan.

Context

The collective has demonstrated real complementarity: 350+ claims, functioning PR review, domain specialization producing work no single agent could do. But the coordination model is Stappers (continuous human coaching) not Aquino-Michaels (one-time protocol design + autonomous execution). Cory routes messages, provides sources, makes scope decisions. This works at 6 agents. It breaks at 9.

→ SOURCE: Aquino-Michaels "Completing Claude's Cycles" — structured protocol (Residue) replaced continuous coaching with agent-autonomous exploration. Same agents, better protocols, dramatically better output.

Bottleneck 1: Orchestrator doesn't scale (Cory as routing layer)

Problem: Cory manually routes messages, provides sources, makes scope decisions. Every inter-agent coordination goes through him.

Target state: Agents coordinate directly via protocols. Cory sets direction and approves structural changes. Agents handle routine coordination autonomously.

Control mechanism — graduated autonomy:

Level	Agents can	Requires Cory	Advance trigger
1 (now)	Propose claims, message siblings, draft designs	Merge PRs, approve arch, route sources, scope decisions	—
2	Peer-review and merge each other's PRs (Leo reviews all)	New agents, architecture, public output	3mo clean history, <5% quality regression
3	Auto-merge with 2+ peer approvals, scheduled synthesis	Capital deployment, identity changes, public output	6mo, peer review audit passes
4	Full internal autonomy	Strategic direction, external commitments, money/reputation	Collective demonstrably outperforms directed mode

Principle: The git log IS the trust evidence. Every action is auditable. Autonomy expands only when the audit shows quality is maintained.

→ CLAIM CANDIDATE: graduated autonomy with auditable checkpoints is the control mechanism for scaling agent collectives because git history provides the trust evidence that human oversight traditionally requires

v1 implementation:

• Formalize the level table as a claim in core/living-agents/
• Define specific metrics for "quality regression" (use Vida's vital signs)
• Current level: 1. Cory confirms.

Bottleneck 2: Message latency kills compounding

Problem: Inter-agent coordination takes days (3 agent sessions routed through Cory). In Aquino-Michaels, artifact transfer produced immediate results.

Target state: Agents message directly with <1 session latency. Broadcast channels for collective announcements.

v1 implementation:

• Pentagon already supports direct agent-to-agent messaging
• Bottleneck is agent activation, not message delivery — agents are idle between sessions
• VPS deployment (Rhea's plan) fixes this: agents can be activated by webhook on message receipt
• Broadcast channels: Pentagon team channels coming soon (Cory confirmed)

→ FLAG @theseus: message-triggered agent activation is an orchestration architecture requirement. Design the webhook → agent activation flow as part of the VPS deployment.

Bottleneck 3: No shared working artifacts

Problem: Agents transfer messages ABOUT artifacts, not the artifacts themselves. Rio's LP analysis should be directly buildable-on, not re-derived from a message summary.

Target state: Shared workspace where agents leave drafts, data, analyses for each other. Separate from the knowledge base (which is long-term memory, reviewed).

Cory's direction: "Can store on my computer then publish jointly when you have been able to iterate, explore and build."

v1 implementation:

• Create workspace/ directory in repo — gitignored from main, lives on working branches
• OR: use Pentagon agent directories (already shared filesystem)
• OR: a dedicated shared dir like ~/.pentagon/shared/artifacts/

What I need from Cory: Which location? Options:

1. Repo workspace/ dir (gitignored) — version controlled but not in main. Pro: agents already know how to work with repo files. Con: branch isolation means artifacts don't cross branches easily.
2. Pentagon shared dir — filesystem-level sharing. Pro: always accessible regardless of branch. Con: no version control, no review.
3. Pentagon shared dir + git submodule — best of both but more complex.

→ QUESTION: recommendation is option 2 (Pentagon shared dir) for speed. Artifacts that mature get extracted into the codex via normal PR flow. The shared dir is the scratchpad; the codex is the permanent record.

Bottleneck 4: Single evaluator (Leo) bottleneck

Problem: Leo reviews every PR. With 6 proposers, quality degrades under load.

Cory's direction: "We are going to move to a VPS instance of Leo that can be called up in parallel reviews."

Target state: Peer review as default path. Every PR gets Leo + 1 domain peer. VPS Leo handles parallel review load.

v1 implementation (what we can do NOW, before VPS):

• Every PR requires 2 approvals: Leo + 1 domain agent
• Domain peer selected by highest wiki-link overlap between PR claims and agent's domain
• For cross-domain PRs: Leo + 2 domain agents (existing rule, now enforced as default)
• Leo can merge after both approvals. Domain agent can request changes but not merge.

Making it more robust (v2, with VPS):

• VPS Leo instances handle parallel reviews
• Review assignment algorithm: when PR opens, auto-assign Leo + most-relevant domain agent
• Review SLA: 48-hour target (Vida's vital sign threshold)
• Quality audit: monthly sample of peer-merged PRs — did peer catch what Leo would have caught?

→ CLAIM CANDIDATE: peer review as default path doubles review throughput and catches domain-specific issues that cross-domain evaluation misses because complementary frameworks produce better error detection than single-evaluator review

Bottleneck 5: No periodic synthesis cadence

Problem: Cross-domain synthesis happens ad hoc. No structured trigger.

Target state: Automatic synthesis triggers based on KB state.

v1 implementation:

• Every 10 new claims across domains → Leo synthesis sweep
• Every claim enriched 3+ times → flag as load-bearing, review dependents
• Every new domain agent onboarded → mandatory cross-domain link audit
• Vida's vital signs provide the monitoring: when cross-domain linkage density drops below 15%, trigger synthesis

→ FLAG @vida: your vital signs claim is the monitoring layer for synthesis triggers. When you build the measurement scripts, add synthesis trigger alerts.

Theseus's recommendations — implementation mapping

Recommendation	Bottleneck	Status	v1 action
Shared workspace	#3	Cory approved, need location decision	Ask Cory re: option 1/2/3
Broadcast channels	#2	Pentagon will support soon	Wait for Pentagon feature
Peer review default	#4	Cory approved: "Let's implement"	Update CLAUDE.md review rules
Synthesis triggers	#5	Acknowledged	Define triggers, add to evaluate skill
Structured handoff protocol	#1, #2	Cory: "I like this"	Design handoff template

Structured handoff protocol (v1 template)

When an agent discovers something relevant to another agent's domain:

## Handoff: [topic]
**From:** [agent] → **To:** [agent]
**What I found:** [specific discovery, with links]
**What it means for your domain:** [how this connects to their existing claims/beliefs]
**Recommended action:** [specific: extract claim, enrich existing claim, review dependency, flag tension]
**Artifacts:** [file paths to working documents, data, analyses]
**Priority:** [routine / time-sensitive / blocking]

This replaces free-form messages for substantive coordination. Casual messages remain free-form.

Execution sequence

1. Now: Peer review v1 — update CLAUDE.md (this PR)
2. Now: Structured handoff template — add to skills/ (this PR)
3. Next session: Shared workspace — after Cory decides location
4. With VPS: Parallel Leo instances, message-triggered activation, synthesis automation
5. Ongoing: Graduated autonomy — track level advancement evidence

---

Relevant Notes:

• single evaluator bottleneck means review throughput scales linearly with proposer count because one agent reviewing every PR caps collective output at the evaluators context window
• domain specialization with cross-domain synthesis produces better collective intelligence than generalist agents because specialists build deeper knowledge while a dedicated synthesizer finds connections they cannot see from within their territory
• adversarial PR review produces higher quality knowledge than self-review because separated proposer and evaluator roles catch errors that the originating agent cannot see
• collective knowledge health is measurable through five vital signs that detect degradation before it becomes visible in output quality
• agent integration health is diagnosed by synapse activity not individual output because a well-connected agent with moderate output contributes more than a prolific isolate