Autonomous Agents

s01 > s02 > s03 > s04 > s05 > s06 | s07 > s08 > s09 > s10 > [ s11 ] s12

"Teammates scan the board and claim tasks themselves" -- no need for the lead to assign each one.

Harness layer: Autonomy -- models that find work without being told.

Problem

In s09-s10, teammates only work when explicitly told to. The lead must spawn each one with a specific prompt. 10 unclaimed tasks on the board? The lead assigns each one manually. Doesn't scale.

True autonomy: teammates scan the task board themselves, claim unclaimed tasks, work on them, then look for more.

One subtlety: after context compression (s06), the agent might forget who it is. Identity re-injection fixes this.

Solution

Teammate lifecycle with idle cycle:

+-------+
| spawn |
+---+---+
    |
    v
+-------+   tool_use     +-------+
| WORK  | <------------- |  LLM  |
+---+---+                +-------+
    |
    | stop_reason != tool_use (or idle tool called)
    v
+--------+
|  IDLE  |  poll every 5s for up to 60s
+---+----+
    |
    +---> check inbox --> message? ----------> WORK
    |
    +---> scan .tasks/ --> unclaimed? -------> claim -> WORK
    |
    +---> 60s timeout ----------------------> SHUTDOWN

Identity re-injection after compression:
  if len(messages) <= 3:
    messages.insert(0, identity_block)

How It Works

1. The teammate loop has two phases: WORK and IDLE. When the LLM stops calling tools (or calls idle), the teammate enters IDLE.

async loop(name: string, role: string, prompt: string) {
  while (true) {
    // WORK phase
    if (idleRequested) break;
    // IDLE phase
    if (!resume) return;
  }
}

1. The idle phase polls inbox and task board in a loop.

while (Date.now() - start < IDLE_TIMEOUT) {
  await sleep(POLL_INTERVAL);
  const inbox = BUS.readInbox(name);
  const unclaimed = scanUnclaimedTasks();
  if (inbox.length || unclaimed.length) return true;
}
return false;

1. Task board scanning: find pending, unowned, unblocked tasks.

function scanUnclaimedTasks() {
  return loadTasks().filter((task) =>
    task.status === "pending" && !task.owner && !(task.blockedBy?.length),
  );
}

1. Identity re-injection: when context is too short (compression happened), insert an identity block.

if (messages.length <= 3) {
  messages.unshift({ role: "assistant", content: `I am ${name}. Continuing.` });
  messages.unshift(makeIdentityBlock(name, role, teamName));
}

What Changed From s10

Component	Before (s10)	After (s11)
Tools	12	14 (+idle, +claim_task)
Autonomy	Lead-directed	Self-organizing
Idle phase	None	Poll inbox + task board
Task claiming	Manual only	Auto-claim unclaimed tasks
Identity	System prompt	+ re-injection after compress
Timeout	None	60s idle -> auto shutdown

Try It

cd learn-claude-code

cd agents-ts
npm install
npm run s11

1. Create 3 tasks on the board, then spawn alice and bob. Watch them auto-claim.
2. Spawn a coder teammate and let it find work from the task board itself
3. Create tasks with dependencies. Watch teammates respect the blocked order.
4. Type /tasks to see the task board with owners
5. Type /team to monitor who is working vs idle