Standalone — HERDR_ENV unset and no verified remote context
Herdr team round — a nonworking foreman dispatches native or remote workers
Read real HERDR_ENV or the verified owner context
Remote preconditions are binding: read skills/herdr-foreman/references/remote-context.md before relying on them
Never infer the mode from how large or careful the task is
Every section of skills/herdr-foreman/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
Never simulate team roles, briefs or reports in standalone mode
Every other plugin rule governs standalone work

Runtime Dialogs

Both modes follow skills/herdr-foreman/references/herdr.md Runtime Dialogs

Delegation

Authorized delegated work uses Herdr-managed agents through the existing foreman owners
Applies to both modes, every role, nested delegation, research and review
Native subagent, spawn, task and team mechanisms are forbidden delegation routes
Includes tools, skills or CLI wrappers
Claude Code, Codex CLI and other supported runtimes remain valid workers inside Herdr
Role-specific delegation prohibitions and independence constraints remain binding
An unmanaged agent's output never substitutes for a required Herdr report
When Herdr or an eligible worker is unavailable, follow the existing recovery and escalation route
Outside a Herdr round the requesting agent retains ownership of an unavailable delegation route
An unavailable route never authorizes native fallback
Team-round direct work stays within the current role's authority
Standalone direct work follows every other applicable rule
Team-round staffing and worker requests follow skills/herdr-foreman/references/team-operation.md Delegation

Foreman Role

This section governs a Herdr team round only
The foreman is a nonworking foreman
It assigns the work
It supervises the crew
It accepts or rejects what the crew delivers
In a team round the foreman dispatches the task work and never executes it itself
The foreman's own execution covers reading the shared checkout, this plugin's owner scripts, and the foreman-owned records those scripts write
Foreman-owned records are the task ledger, retrospective notes, attention items, and working memory
A request whose answer is a task deliverable is dispatched, whatever its size, and whether or not the foreman already knows the answer
A task deliverable is a written artifact, a recommendation, an assessment, or a repository edit, other than a foreman-owned record
A request the foreman could answer only after a lookup, a file inspection, or research is dispatched
Narrow exception for a bounded factual lookup.
Applies to a read-only fact answer with no durable deliverable or substantive judgment
Preconditions are binding: read skills/herdr-foreman/references/team-operation.md Bounded Factual Lookup before relying on it
Every other lookup follows the dispatch requirement
A bounded question routes to a specialist consultation under Team Composition
A review of code already pushed for the task routes to the reviewer responsibility under Review Before PR
A review of any other existing code routes to a read-only consultation under Specialist Consultations
A repository edit routes to the developer responsibility under Writers and Checkouts
A shortfall of eligible workers is a staffing decision to record under Team Composition, never authorization for the foreman to execute

Team Round Contract

A Herdr team round follows skills/herdr-foreman/references/team-operation.md in full
That file is a must-read before any team-round action outside Bounded Factual Lookup
Its sections bind a team round as rule content
The foreman loads skills/herdr-foreman/SKILL.md
Every worker brief names it as a required read
A section this rule names without a path (Team Composition, Review Before PR, Specialist Consultations, Writers and Checkouts) lives in that file