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The staged home and the task runner

The staged home a launch builds, and the just task runner around it.

Staged-home handoff

A composition adapter can turn one immutable bundle into a launcher-neutral home tree without teaching agent-compose the launcher's manifest, container, permission, or lifecycle model.

The adapter starts with an empty private directory and runs:

agent-compose verify 
agent-compose project  \
  --layout  \
  --scope home \
  --target

The selected agent controls the only accepted load points:

  • claude - .claude/CLAUDE.md and optional .claude/skills/
  • codex - .codex/AGENTS.md and optional .agents/skills/
  • goose - .config/goose/.goosehints and optional .agents/skills/
  • opencode - .config/opencode/AGENTS.md and optional .agents/skills/

Agent-compose also writes .agent-compose/ projection state. That directory can contain projection.json and a platform lock file. It is not agent context. After project returns and no other process can use the private staging directory, an adapter removes .agent-compose/, validates that only the selected load points remain, and wraps those files in its own handoff schema.

The adapter owns that new schema. Agent-compose never parses or emits it. Agent-compose also never starts a container, selects runtime authority, mounts a tool, or invokes a launch consumer.

The role in the source bundle selects context. A matching role slug in another system does not transfer permissions or merge authority into the projected home. When the bundle was composed from role-scoped providers, home projection preserves the same selected skill inventory as native projection. Projection does not re-resolve providers or mutate the immutable input bundle.

The generic projection remains useful on its own through agent-compose and the acompose host entrypoint. No composition root is required for native use.

Cross-repository orchestration is tracked in inbox#267. This producer-side boundary is tracked in agent-compose#103.

just, the task runner

Every development verb is a recipe in the repo-root justfile. just alone lists them.

Retiring per-repo ward exec is coilysiren/inbox#366, under the principle in #365: ward is out-of-band flight control, so a repo should mention it in passing rather than route its whole build through it. The pattern is agentic-os#1048.

What changed

All 30 verbs moved with identical names and identical command lines. The commands: block is gone from .ward/ward.yaml.

Arguments pass straight through, so the -- separator is retired:

just evalkit-export evaluations/pilot/ops-board-2026-08-12-regraded
just test

Why .ward/ward.yaml still exists

It carries the catalog: block and nothing else. check_catalog_block pins that exact path, and catalog-trifecta requires README, AGENTS, and FEATURES to each link it. Both are authored upstream in agentic-os, so this repo cannot remove the file. Tracked at agentic-os#1081.

One line of comment per recipe

just reads only the last comment line above a recipe, so a wrapped description silently truncates to its tail. agentic-os#1048 found this the hard way. Keep descriptions on one line.

What was lost, stated rather than hidden

The clean-tree gate. ward exec refused a repo verb while the working tree was dirty, so an audit row could be reconstructed from git history. just has no equivalent and this repo now has none.

Nothing here depended on it: no non-doc reference to --audit-override-dirty or the gate exists, which matches what agentic-os#1048 found in its own corpus. Recorded because it is a real reduction, not because it broke anything.

Related

  • Release - the release verbs, now recipes.