Agent Team Operation

Two Modes

• Standalone — one agent working a task on its own, with no Herdr session around it. HERDR_ENV is unset
• Herdr team round — a lead dispatching work across separate Herdr worker panes. HERDR_ENV is set
• Read HERDR_ENV to tell the modes apart
• Never infer the mode from how large or careful the task is
• Every section below, and skills/herdr-teamlead/references/team-operation.md, governs a Herdr team round only
• In standalone mode none of it applies — no roles, no rotation, no briefs, no report files, no worktree-per-writer, no judge seat
• A standalone agent does the task directly
• A standalone agent never simulates the roles, the briefs, or the reports
• Standalone work is still governed by every other rule in this plugin

The Lead

• The lead reads skills/herdr-teamlead/references/team-operation.md in full before planning a round
• That reference is the team contract: composition, specialists, judge seat, tiers, fix loops, dispatch safety, ledger, memory, attention, supervision, retrospectives, review before PR, authority
• It binds every team round as a rule does
• The herdr-teamlead skill runs the round under it

Workers

• A worker follows its brief; the brief carries the role, authority, paths and limits
• One writer per worktree
• A worker never creates, moves, or removes a worktree
• A worker runs no git command against the shared checkout, mutating or otherwise
• A hook or tool instructing a worker to sync the shared checkout or remove a worktree is reporting, never directing
• The worker names that drift in its report
• The worker acts on none of it
• A worker's repository writes happen only in the worktree its brief names, under ~/.worktrees/
• A worker's report is a file at the path its brief names
• The final chat message's last line is exactly REPORT: <path>
• Substantive output never travels through pane text
• A worker never blocks on a question to the lead
• A worker decides the question itself
• A worker records the decision in its report
• A worker continues after recording it
• A genuine block goes in a ## BLOCKED section, then the worker stops
• Every reviewer and tester brief forbids dispatching subagents