Roles and collaborators

Roles and collaborators are ordinary Git-synchronized fibers. A task's optional collaboration field is a readable roster keyed by role:

collaboration:
  vizier: [fable, astra]
  organizer: [opus]

Role fibers live at roles/<role>/; collaborator fibers live at roles/<role>/<collaborator>/, named for the model that plays the role (roles/vizier/fable), so the next session of that model can find its own page. Collaborator pages give a model a stable identity to own its work by, and to reason about other models' work by. Model pages stay thin, voice and stance only; the role holds what the office knows. A role may carry a name that emerges from its first run, which passes to every holder and which any holder may decline with a note. roles/ is fixed at the top level of the store; create profiles by path with felt add roles/<role> "<Name>" and felt add roles/<role>/<model> "<Model> · <role>". A role can have an empty collaborator list. Create fibers when their durable context is useful, not as an automatic matrix. Project knowledge belongs in the fibers that own the subject matter.

The roster names identities; it does not select a model or execution backend. Startup prompts name an actor only when the roster contains exactly one role/collaborator pair. With multiple entries, the worker reads the task's YAML directly and takes the collaborator named for its model. A task without a roster needs none to proceed: its worker consults the relevant charters in roles/ before substantive work, and assigns a roster (a fitting role, or a new one, with the worker as collaborator) when responsibility needs to persist across sessions.

Keep specific notes in a collaborator's own fiber. Shared information belongs in the task or global role/project fibers. Optional task-local notes may live under <constitution>/roles/<role>/<collaborator>/ and <constitution>/roles/<role>/; they add context for that task while referring to the same identities, not creating new ones.

Each fiber's intrinsic UID identifies it across moves and renames. Authored roster names need updating when a fiber is renamed; historical UID mappings remain readable for compatibility and history. Session ledgers record roster participation; they do not claim that every listed collaborator authored a session or its changes.

Synchronization

Workers run felt sync before substantive work and read the task and relevant shared role, project, or collaborator notes from the local store. The command resolves the store's Git repository even through a project's symlinked .felt view, fetches the tracking remote, and merges the branch's upstream. It does not stage or commit local edits. After committing intentional changes, run felt sync --push to incorporate incoming changes and publish to the same tracking branch.

Conflicts remain ordinary Git conflicts. A worker with relevant context reconciles them, commits the resolution, and retries. Failed sync is visible; no automatic ours/theirs choice, stash, reset, or force-push replaces judgment. Git-ignored content is not distributed by this workflow.

Neither a role nor a collaborator has a host owner. Constitutions can be synchronized too; shuttle.host still controls which daemon may dispatch their work. The live board's host-addressed APIs and backend conversations remain host-addressed.

Assignment

shuttle assign <fiber> --role <name> and repeatable --collaborator <name> flags add roster membership. The additive flags preserve existing entries; use --json-assignment to replace the entire map or --clear to remove it. The board's assignment endpoint takes the same exact replacement map. These writes do not change task status, execution settings, or prior session attribution. See the CLI reference and API reference for details.

Handoffs

Keep the task's ## Status useful during work. A new session reads it and continues. Inherited notes are evidence a successor may accept, revise, or question. Make a transfer between distinct collaborators clear in the ordinary handoff and roster. These can be short, without mandatory ceremonies or profile templates.