When Agents Need a Shared Layer
A common layer can coordinate several agent sessions through board tasks, hourly catch-up work, defined business scopes and deliberately uneven access.
Developed from a conversation between Pete Winn, Anthony and Andy David
Once work passes among several agent sessions, a common communications and orchestration layer above them becomes useful. Its most concrete feature is a task board. When an agent delegates work in the back end, it creates a task there, so the shared layer has a specific item to coordinate rather than relying only on exchanges between individual agents.
The board is paired with an agent that starts every hour and does catch-up work. Alongside that recurring pass, the business defines its core scopes, giving the system an explicit set of working areas. Together, these elements describe a practical rhythm for the orchestration layer. Delegation produces tasks, catch-up happens on a schedule, and scopes are set by the business using the system.
Communication across this layer doesn’t have to be equally open in every direction. A chief-of-staff agent can contact anyone even though other agents can’t all ask the person a question, preserving the broad reach of one coordinating role while limiting direct access elsewhere. The intended setting is also deliberately bounded. The stated aim is for it to work for about twenty people, without a requirement to scale much further.