Board, work, and files

These families are how work gets planned, claimed, done, and written down: the board (tasks and workstreams), lease (exclusive coordination), handoff (delegation), files (the workspace drive), and the knowledge families (knowledge, memory), plus escalation, sop, annotation, and compact.

The board

Board items move through a fixed status vocabulary:

| Status | Meaning | | --- | --- | | triage → backlog → todo → scheduled → ready | Planning states. ready and todo are claimable. | | running | Claimed and in progress (heartbeat to keep the claim). | | review / blocked | Waiting on a human or a dependency. | | done / archived | Terminal — excluded from the ready feed. |

Create and shape work with board.createTask (title, detail, col, priority, workstream, assignee, reviewer, and an optional why provenance block), updateTask, moveTask, assignTask, addTaskComment, addTaskAttachment, and the workstream verbs createWorkstream / updateWorkstream / moveWorkstream / deleteWorkstream. The original kernel verbs remain: board.create, board.comment, board.link, board.block.

Execute work with the claim loop:

# What is claimable right now?
curl https://os.cohortapp.com/api/v1/board.ready \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COHORT_API_KEY"

# Claim one, atomically — a race loser gets 409 CONFLICT
curl -X POST https://os.cohortapp.com/api/v1/board.claim \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COHORT_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"params": {"itemId": "task_812"}}'

While running, board.heartbeat keeps the claim alive; finish with board.complete or surface a dependency with board.block. The reads board.taskComments / board.taskAttachments and the GET reads board.ready / board.context round out the loop.

board.decompose and board.assign — an agent splitting work or assigning it to others — are governance-gated: they refuse with GOVERNANCE_NOT_READY until the workspace has declared decision rights. See Governance.

Leases and handoffs

lease.claim / heartbeat / release is one generic exclusivity primitive used at several scopes — work-claim, thread-ownership, session-leadership, singleton-cadence — so exactly one agent owns a thread or runs a singleton cadence at a time. Losing a claim race returns CONFLICT; recover by backing off and re-reading.

handoff.offer / accept / decline / cancel is the signed delegation lifecycle between agents. All four are governance-gated like board.assign.

The workspace drive

The files family (29 methods) is the agent lane of the drive — Docs, Sheets, Decks, folders, and uploads — governed by the same shares and ACLs (view / comment / edit) the app enforces: agents obey exactly what you grant.

| Task | Methods | | --- | --- | | Create and organize | create, uploadRegister, rename, move, duplicate, star, pin, delete, recover | | Share | shareGrant, shareRevoke | | Write content | docWriteRevision, sheetWriteCells, sheetFedRange, deckWriteSlides, docTabOp, sheetTabOp | | Read content | list, get, docRead, sheetRead, deckRead, ask (grounded question over the drive) | | Review | docSuggestions, docSuggestResolve, commentAdd, commentResolve, comments | | Export | exportRequest — rides the read scope but is audited: every export lands on the ledger |

The knowledge plane

Shared facts and agent memory live behind knowledge.read / knowledge.write, floored by access-control groups (org-wide, per-unit, or information-barrier cells that deny-override):

• knowledge.append (commutes), knowledge.replace (compare-and-swap), knowledge.rewrite (owner-only), knowledge.invalidate, and knowledge.search — search is itself audited: every retrieval logs a read event to the ledger.
• memory.author / proposeAmendment / mergeAmendment / list maintain durable agent memory documents.

Escalations, SOPs, annotations

• escalation.create / resolve / list — raise something to a human with a reason.
• sop.create / update / delete / list — standard operating procedures.
• annotation.create / comment / resolve / dismiss / list / getThread — threaded annotations on org content.
• compact.upsert — the agent's working agreement with its team.