Squads

Write persona: developer on a ticket and developer does that work. Whoever wrote the ticket has already decided who. But there are also tickets where whose job it is only becomes clear after someone has taken the work in hand.

A squad is a way to hand that decision over as well. You group a few personas under one name and put that name on the ticket. That ticket goes to the group's leader. The leader does not do the work. It reads the ticket, decides who will do it, and issues a new ticket to that member.

Where it parts from a persona

A squad has no profile. No skills, no memory, no color, no cap. Two files inside <queue folder>/squads/<name>/ are the whole of it. members, which lists the members, and rules, which the leader reads when it chooses. The second one is optional.

That is because a squad is not an identity. A profile is the writing that hands a session who it is, and that is still the persona's share (Personas). What a squad decides is two things. Who receives this ticket, and what that person looks at when dividing it up.

The name on the first line is the leader. members is a file where the order carries meaning. The top line is this squad's leader, and a ticket that carries the squad goes to that one person only. The rest of the members have nothing to do with that work until the leader issues them a ticket.

A new project has default

Create a project and one squad is laid down with it. Its name is default. Open the Squads screen and that one row is already at the top of the left list. It is also the row picked first.

There are four members. pm, developer, qa, designer. Five personas come with the project, and archive-manager alone is left out. A leader has no occasion to pick that persona. The session closing a ticket calls the name directly when it issues an archive ticket.

The leader is pm. That is the first-line rule as it stands. rules is not laid down, so pm decides whose job it is from the member names and the first line of each profile, nothing more. If you want to give it a basis for choosing, write it in Rules in the right column.

Open the dialog to issue a ticket and the assignee field already has Squad default picked. Issue it as it is and that ticket goes to pm. pm reads it and then issues a ticket to a member. If you already know who will do it, pick a persona in that same field. To attach nobody, use None at the top. Delete default or rename it and that field opens on None from the start.

It is not created on a project already running. Scaffolding lays files down only when it makes a new queue. It does not overwrite a file that is already there. To stand one up on a project you have been using, make it yourself as in Making a squad, below. Name it default and the default selection in the issue field follows along.

Making a squad

Go to Squads in the header. It is the same screen as personas. At the entrance where you used to make a persona, one more field has been added for choosing what to make. Pick squad there.

The naming rule is the same as for a persona. Letters, digits, -, and _ only. And it shares its names with personas. Try to make a squad by the name of a persona that already exists and it is refused, and the other way around too. Because the two use one namespace in the left list, a name collision would leave no way of telling which row is which.

Once it is made, that row appears in the left list. The row stacks the members' color dots and carries the name and Members n. A squad has neither a color of its own nor a size on the row.

Where it appears is decided by Group view at the top of the list. With it on, squads are top level and the member names come out only when you unfold the row. Turn it off and it appears inside the Squads group with no children to unfold. Members are then seen by picking the row and looking at the right column. It is on by default. Turning it off is not saved, so refreshing turns it back on (Personas). While you are working on squads, leaving it on is easier. Who is in what shows straight from the list.

Delete every squad and only personas are left, so the list goes flat and Group view goes with it.

Choosing members

Pick a squad row and the right column opens. It is shorter than a persona's column. Two sections, Rules and Members.

Inside the Members section it splits in two again. Leader on top, Members below. One card goes in the leader spot and everyone else appears below. Adding is the Add at the group head, removing is Remove on the card. Those two are the whole of deciding who belongs. Once you have picked them all, Save at the bottom of the section.

Press Add and a list of names unfolds right there. Search names sits above it, and a few letters narrow it down. The Add in the members group shows only personas not yet in this squad. A name you pick is appended after the member list.

A persona with no profile does not appear in that list. That is a persona whose name is on a ticket while the file does not exist yet. You have to make the profile before you can put the name in as a member.

If the profile of a name you had put in as a member disappears later, that name stays at the very bottom of the members group wearing No profile. It is one line rather than a card, so it has no color dot and no role field, and the only thing you can do to it is Remove. Wiping it out along with the save would make a name a person put in disappear without a sound. So we picked the side that makes a place for it and shows it.

You can also save with no members left at all. The member count on the left row shows 0. What becomes of a ticket carrying that squad is in How the engine starts the leader, below.

The one handle for deciding the leader is the Add in the leader group. That list is split in two. Members on top, the names in this squad now. Not in this squad below. Raising one member to leader and bringing someone in from outside both finish in this one list. The card does not carry that handle.

A name that comes down from the leader spot leaves the squad. It does not stay as a member. The text you wrote in its role field goes as well. That is why swapping the leader while there is one already brings up a confirmation first. The head is Remove leader — with the name that will leave behind it. The body tells you that name leaves this squad. If there was text in the role field, one more sentence about that going too is added. Press Cancel and nothing changes. It changes only if you press Remove.

It asks even when the role field is empty. What the confirmation guards is not the text you wrote but the name that disappears. Two places do not ask. Seating the first leader on No leader has no name to lose, and Remove on a member card is not the leader spot.

To keep the previous leader as a member costs one more move. Pick that name again from the Add in the members group.

Remove on the leader card follows the same rule. That name leaves the squad and No leader appears in the empty spot. It is a state that exists only before saving. Save and the first line of that file is the leader again. The name that was at the top of the members group takes that spot. Refresh the screen and that name is showing as leader.

What you are looking at is what the file will become if you press save. Until you press it, the file does not change.

The role goes on the card's second row. Write in one line what this person does in this group, like Owns the screens. Leave it empty and the first line of that persona's profile shows through in gray. Saving does not put that sentence into the file, and when the leader receives it, the first line of the profile fills that spot instead. Which means there is no obligation to write the role again for every squad. The Add list has no such field. The role of a name not in the squad has nowhere to be saved.

Member names are pressable. Press the name on a card's first row and the right column changes to that persona's detail. There is no digging back through the left list to see what is written in a profile. That name gets picked on the left as well, and this squad stays unfolded. Hover and the name gets an underline. That is the only sign that it is pressable. Tabbing to it and pressing enter opens it too. The leader card is the same.

The name on the No profile line at the very bottom is not pressable. It is a name with no detail to open, so it gets no underline either.

The way back is the browser's back button. Press it once and the address returns to this squad and the right column returns to the detail you were just looking at. Picking this squad's row in the left list again does the same. A half-written thing is not lost. Put text in a role field, leave without saving, come back, and that text is still there. Unsaved stays on the left row while you are away, too. With nothing to lose, no box asks whether you really mean to leave.

What the leader looks at when it chooses goes in the Rules field above. It is free prose with no syntax, and the engine only reads it and hands it to the leader. Leave it empty and save and the file goes away entirely. Then the leader decides from the member names and each of their roles, nothing more.

The two values are laid at squads/<name>/members and squads/<name>/rules. members is <name> <role> per line and it cuts once at the first space, so the role side may be a sentence. You can also edit it in an editor directly. The screen does not re-sort the order. Save and the names that were already there stay in the order the file has them, and only the names added this time are appended after. A first line held from the file does not change because you saved on screen. The one thing that moves the order is the Add in the leader group. The name you pick there goes to the file's first line.

Putting a squad on a ticket

Write one squad: line in the ticket frontmatter. The value is one squad name. It is not written as a list the way deps: is. One ticket belongs to one squad.

---
ticket: 3f9a12c4
title: The login screen margins are tight
kind: work
squad: frontend
---

You do not have to write it by hand. The issue dialog and the edit form on a ticket detail both pick it in the same field. The options in the field where you used to pick a persona are split into two groups, personas and squads, and squads are the lower one. A ticket has one assignee, so there is one field.

That is why persona: and squad: do not stand together. Pick a squad on screen and squad: is written and the persona: line is erased. Pick a persona and it is the other way around. If you edited the file by hand and wrote both, squad: wins.

How the engine starts the leader

At the very moment it picks a ticket, it reads the first line of members. Three lines are the whole of it.

When the leader is blocked, the whole squad stalls. That is a chosen value, not a fault. Whom to give it to was handed to one person's judgment, so when that person is busy, no judgment comes out. If it blocks often, raise the leader's cap (Personas) or change the first line of members to a less busy persona.

Not passing it on while members are idle is also the value that keeps one ticket from splitting across two people. Whether the leader looks at it late or early, the person dividing that ticket up is one.

In the order of members, the only line that carries meaning is the first. From the second line on, the order decides nothing.

What the leader does

What a leader session receives is its own profile, skills, and memory with one squad block added. The squad name, the names of every member and each of their roles, who the leader is, and rules in full.

The leader reads ## Goal and issues a ticket to a member. It is a new ticket with that member's name in persona:. Then it writes in the ## 결과 (the result section) of the ticket it was holding who it issued what to, and closes it. Closing without one line of code having changed is normal. What the leader did was decide, not work.

So one squad ticket costs one more session and one more ticket. That is the price of handing over the judgment. For work where who does it is already settled, writing persona: from the start is shorter.

If a ticket the leader issued carries squad: again, a leader starts again. The engine does not stop this.

Members know which squad they are in, too. A persona in a squad always receives that block in its prompt. It does not matter whether the ticket it is holding right now carries squad:. The point is to work knowing your own role and the role of the person beside you. rules goes to the leader only.

The cap, and the record

The cap that catches here is the leader's. A cap is a value set per persona and a squad has no cap of its own. If the leader is developer and developer's cap is two, that squad's tickets do not come up while developer is already holding two. Coming in by way of a squad does not make a third.

The engine does one more thing at the moment it picks the ticket. It writes the leader's name into persona:. So that session is counted exactly like an ordinary persona ticket. The persona column on the board card, the color dot, the owner: line, the profile riding in the prompt: not one spot differs.

While nobody has picked it up yet, the board shows the squad: value instead. No color dot is attached. A squad has no color. The moment it is picked up, that spot turns into the leader's name.

Why a ticket went to that persona shows when you put the two values side by side. squad: stays in the file as it is, and persona: is that group's leader. Read the two together in the frontmatter table on the ticket detail.

persona: is a record, not an instruction. It is not erased when a session ends and the ticket is reclaimed, and the next dispatch resolves it again and overwrites it. To fix it on one person, delete the squad: line.

Deleting a squad

That is Delete at the head of the right column. The squads/<name> folder is deleted and it cannot be undone.

The squad: value on tickets carrying that squad stays as it is. It is not deleted along with it. The next time that ticket is dispatched, one warning line is added as in the third row of the table above and it goes down the old path. If all you want is to change the name, make a new squad, fill in the members, and move the value on the tickets.

Next is Protocols.