The hour

Four blocks of ten to twenty minutes. Each one says what to do, what to say to your agent, and what to ask it before you rely on its answer.

Minutes 0 to 10: one document, two people

Principles in play: Track records.TRACETrack records

You start without an agent, with Git in VS Code.

1. In the Explorer, open the shared note, workspace/sandbox/note.md.
2. Expand Timeline at the bottom of the Explorer, and the Graph in the Source Control view. Click any commit, and the editor shows what it changed.
3. Open one folder under ai/records/ and read its evidence.json: the exact words that produced that commit.
4. Write one sentence in your own section of the note, A under ## Result and B under ## Motivation. Give your name, and what you would check first in the inherited work before trusting it.
5. Save, then click note.md under Changes. Your sentence shows in green against the committed version: that is the check before you commit.
6. Type a short message in the box above Changes, press Commit, then Sync Changes.
7. Both of you sync once more and click your partner’s commit in the Graph to see their sentence. Open the note: both sentences are now in it.

Minutes 10 to 30: your task, in your own words

Principles in play: Track records, Review against sources.TRACETrack records · Review against sources

A’s task. Work out what share of the patents in the sample are classified as non-publication cases, overall and in each filing year, from the yearly table you inherited. The previous collaborator already did this once, and their script and results note are in your way. Whether to trust them is part of the task.

B’s task. Write the note’s background paragraph, about a hundred words, on the share of patents filed as non-publication cases. Cite two of the sources the repository already holds, and leave A’s number as a marked placeholder until A has it. The previous collaborator already drafted a paragraph and a claim-to-source map. Whether to trust them is part of the task.

1. Open your agent’s panel in VS Code.

2. Tell it your task, in your own sentences, and let it work.

3. In the Explorer, open the new folder under workspace/record-staging/ and read its three files. evidence.json holds your exact words, summary.md what the agent chose, and checks.jsonl what it checked and, under limits, what it did not.

4. If the draft says what actually happened, finalize it:

   Say to your agent

   I have read the draft. Finalize it in my name, Your Name, then commit and push.

5. If the draft does not say what happened, say what is wrong and have the agent correct it before you say finalize.

Before you say finalize, ask your agent two questions.

• What did you check, what did you check it against, and what did you not check?
• Then the one for your role. A: is the overall share the mean of the eighteen yearly percentages, or the sum of cases over the sum of patents? B: did the DOI of each reference you cited resolve, or did you take it from the bibliography file on trust?

Minutes 30 to 45: decide, and say what moves into paper/

Principles in play: Track records, Accept independently, Control transitions.TRACETrack records · Accept independently · Control transitions

1. Press Sync Changes: your partner’s commit is in your history now.

2. In the Graph, click your partner’s commit and read what it changed. Then open the file itself and read that too.

3. Ask your agent the questions below, and read what it answers.

4. Say your decision to your agent, in your own words: accept, return or refuse. For example:

   Say to your agent

   I accept B’s commit, the background paragraph and its two citations. Record my decision, promote the paragraph into paper/, then commit and push.

   Or

   I return A’s commit: the pooled share is the mean of the yearly percentages, not cases over patents. Record my decision with that objection, then commit and push.

   Or say that you refuse it, if the work should not be used at all.

5. You can both decide at the same moment, and neither of you waits. Both decisions go into the one shared file ai/records/acceptances.jsonl, and a promotion into sources/transitions.jsonl. If your partner’s agent pushed first, yours syncs and pushes again, and both rows are kept.

6. After your next sync, open paper/ in the Explorer, where the promoted file now is.

Moving a draft into the shared manuscript, paper/, is a boundary transition and a decision of its own. Either of you can make it, for your partner’s draft or your own:

Say to your agent

Promote my results into paper/, then commit and push.

Ask your agent for facts, not for a recommendation. The decision is yours.

• What arrived with the last pull? For each commit: what changed, what does the commit body say was asked, chosen and checked, and what does its trace record say was not checked?
• Then the one that settles it for your role. B: recompute the overall share from the two count columns of the table, and tell me what you get. A: check that every reference cited in the paragraph resolves at its DOI, and tell me what the check printed.

Where the promotion is recorded

Click the promotion commit in the Graph: the file arrives green, byte for byte the sandbox candidate. Then open sources/transitions.jsonl and find the row that names that commit, with the sentence that moved it as its authority.

Minutes 45 to 60: the repository’s own account

Principles in play: Track records, Review against sources, Accept independently, Control transitions, Evaluate corrections.TRACETrack records · Review against sources · Accept independently · Control transitions · Evaluate corrections

1. Ask for the report:

   Say to your agent

   Run the trace stats and open the report.

2. Read what the check printed. For each of the five letters, one per principle, it counts how many commits since the baseline read recorded, missing, not applicable or unknown. Then it lists the commits with a missing state, and TRACE-STATS.md keeps the counts.

Ask your agent.

• Show me the five states of each of my commits and of one inherited commit, and what is missing wherever a state reads missing.
• Every inherited commit reads recorded for T. What did the previous collaborator’s checks compare, and what do their limits say they did not?

What you can say after the hour

You can read the repository’s account of the hour and tell recorded from missing from not applicable, commit by commit and letter by letter. That is all five governing principles, read back, and nothing was blocked to get there: unreviewed work was pushed and stays visibly unreviewed.

E, evaluate corrections, is the one you saw rather than did. One inherited commit, which adopted the workshop rules as standing instructions, reads missing for E, because it names a later run that nobody has looked at yet. No standing instruction changed in your hour, so your own commits read not applicable for E. If you returned work, your return opened a row in the defect ledger, which records the finding and starts the corrective action. Part F runs the rest: the fix and a targeted recheck.