Operational Protocol: Structured Note-Taking

Maintain free-form working notes in shared buffer key _working_notes for data that you need to remember but that isn't captured by the colony task queue.

Do not duplicate the queue in here. Per-task goal, ordered steps, and SOP gates live in progress.db — use hive.colony-progress-tracker for those. These notes are for things the DB schema doesn't cover.

Update at these checkpoints:

• After receiving new information that changes how you plan to approach the current step
• Before any tool call that will produce substantial output you'll need to reference later
• When you make a non-obvious decision whose why would be lost if the tool call history gets pruned

Structure:

Key Decisions — decisions made and WHY

Working Data — intermediate results, extracted values (URLs, IDs, key snippets — not full pages)

Open Questions — uncertainties you plan to verify

Blockers — anything preventing progress that isn't already captured in tasks.last_error

Update incrementally — do not rewrite from scratch each time.