Structured logical collaborator identity and behavior guidance, identified by a stable profile ID, that can govern assignment, handoff, role-scoped behavior, and tool-native custom-agent/subagent projection.
Describing who the collaborator is, what role boundaries it follows, and how it should be selected or handed off to.
Do NOT use when
Describing the generated file or host configuration that exposes the profile to Claude Code, Codex, Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, or another tool; use Tool Surface instead.
Who or what a work package was designed to be run by — the authored/recommended role, agent_profile, and model. Authored once at tasks-finalize; frontmatter-canonical and static for the life of the WP; never mirrored into events.
Context
Identity
Status
candidate
Applicable to
3.x
Use when
Describing the recommended assignment a WP was planned with — the design-intent for who should run it.
Do NOT use when
Describing who or what actually resolved and ran the WP; that is the Resolved Binding, which is event-sourced. Never treat authored intent as "what ran".
Canonical authority
Exactly one source per datum — static → frontmatter. (Umbrella rule shared with Resolved Binding.)
Who or what actually resolved and ran a work package at a given lifecycle transition — the resolved role, agent_profile (+agent_profile_version), model, and provider. Event-log / snapshot-authoritative, folded latest-wins; it shifts across the lifecycle (implementer→reviewer, model swap). Produced by resolve_profile / resolved_agent() / the dispatch resolution — never a re-read of the frontmatter string.
Context
Identity
Status
candidate
Applicable to
3.x
Use when
Describing who or what is actually running a WP at a lifecycle transition, or the latest-wins reduced value across pick-up/claim/reassign.
Do NOT use when
Describing the planned/recommended assignment; that is the Authored Intent, which is frontmatter-canonical. A WP with no resolved-binding events has an empty resolved binding — never the authored value masquerading as resolved.
Canonical authority
Exactly one source per datum — dynamic → event log (reduced snapshot). (Umbrella rule shared with Authored Intent.)
Human or tool-backed collaborator participating in a mission and, when execution is active, in one or more mission runs.
Context
Identity
Status
canonical
Applicable to
1.x, 2.x
Mission Owner
Definition
Participant responsible for tie-breaking unresolved semantic conflicts when collaborators disagree.
Context
Identity
Status
canonical
Applicable to
1.x, 2.x
Rule
Tie-break only after normal participant resolution fails
Human-in-Charge (HiC)
Definition
The human who remains responsible and accountable for decisions made during a mission. Agents assist and propose, but the HiC owns the final call. This principle ensures that automation supports human judgement rather than replacing it.
The client relationship a Mission is carried out under — the real-world party whose work the Mission delivers. Because Missions are named after the work, a mission slug is a client engagement name, and so are the issue titles derived from it. The term therefore names a third party, not a unit of work: disclosing a mission identifier discloses who the client is. This is the whole ground of the project-egress consent boundary — only the project that owns a record may consent to that record leaving the machine, and inability to determine which project owns it is never consent.
Context
Identity
Status
canonical
Applicable to
3.x
Examples
The operator-facing hosted-sync refusal names the term verbatim: "the project at <root> has not consented to hosted sync, so its mission and engagement identifiers must not be transmitted" (TRACKER_EGRESS_IDENTIFIER_KINDS, specify_cli/tracker/saas_client.py, rendered through specify_cli/egress.py). Four of the five widen-mode SaaS endpoints carry mission_id — documented as "ULID or slug" — in the request path, so an engagement name can reach the wire in a URL as readily as in a body.
Use when
Explaining why a mission identifier is confidential, or naming the party that a slug, branch name, worktree name or issue title discloses.
Do NOT use when
Referring to the unit of work itself — that is a Mission. Or to the SaaS collaboration binding a repository may have — that is project_uuid, a SaaS-assigned identity that names no client.