Coordinator loops

Squadboard uses deterministic server loops for repeatable control flow and reserves LLM calls for ambiguity.

Ready pickup

Cards in columns marked with the Ready semantic are picked up automatically.

Bounded judgment

The coordinator asks an LLM only when role fit or summarization requires interpretation.

Lifecycle loops

Run advancement, ceremonies, close-out, GitHub sync, and Ralph decisions are audited loops.

Ready pickup loop

1. A card enters a column whose semantic type is ready.
2. The pickup sweep loads the card, labels, parent links, project rules, agent roles, skills, and recent run state.
3. Deterministic gates run first: blocked parents, unavailable agents, backlog constraints, thin issue checks, and circuit-breaker lockouts.
4. If one agent is clearly eligible, Squadboard creates the issue run without a semantic LLM decision.
5. If role fit is ambiguous, the coordinator uses a schema-bound LLM decision and writes the result to the routing log.
6. The workflow-step sweep claims the pending run and starts execution.

Board state rules

Ready means ready to run. In Progress means an active run exists. Squadboard should not require a play button for ordinary Ready pickup, and it should not allow a manual move into In Progress when no run is active.

Close-out and continuation

When work reaches review or delivery, lifecycle loops can trigger Scribe-style close-out and ceremony work. Ralph-style monitoring is opt-in pre-alpha automation that can choose the next eligible work item, but every decision should remain visible through audit records rather than hidden background action.

Where upstream Squad fits

The coordinator reads the same project/team concepts that upstream Squad uses: .squad/ conventions, agent charters, decisions, skills, and MCP recipes. Squadboard adds durable database state and deterministic loops around those conventions.