Situational-awareness adapters: a read-only information channel for dispatch decisions

[junghan0611]

Why this issue exists

Related: #38

entwurf_v2 dispatch is one-command. Before that single command fires, the agent needs situational awareness: who is live, what just happened, and how a peer can be reached right now. This issue records the need for a dedicated information channel that supplies that awareness — as plugins/adapters, not as new core logic.

Purpose (single)

The only purpose is this:

An information channel that lets an agent decide whom to call, where, and how to summon a sibling (peer).

It feeds the dispatch decision. Nothing more.

Boundary: independent of entwurf-core logic

This sits outside entwurf-core logic. It does not change core. It is a read-only information layer that plugs in as adapters and supplies facts the core already asks for:

• who exists / is live, dormant, unsupported, indeterminate (liveness fact)
• what recently happened in or around a peer (recent activity snapshot)
• can this sender reach that peer now, and by which path (addressability / replyability)

These map directly onto entwurf-core substrate questions (liveness fact, dispatch decision, delivery evidence). But the awareness sources stay in the plugin/adapter layer — core stays untouched.

Adapters that can attach over time

As the system matures, awareness adapters attach incrementally:

• Agent-activity trackers — e.g. re_gent, a git-like audit/blame for AI coding agents (rgt log / rgt blame / rgt show, hook-driven, one snapshot per turn, survives /compact//clear).
  • sources: https://news.hada.io/topic?id=30496 · https://github.com/regent-vcs/re_gent
  • re_gent currently supports Claude Code / Codex / OpenCode (pi not yet). But via the claude-code plugin path from Direction: Entwurf as the peer substrate beyond pi-shell-acp #38, a pi session reached through Claude Code can still be captured — so "pi unsupported" is not a hard blocker.
• A custom-built awareness adapter is equally fine. The interface (liveness + recent activity + addressability) matters more than the specific tool.

What this is NOT

• not a task planner
• not a memory database (durable memory stays in ~/org, botlog, agenda, Denote, andenken)
• not model routing
• not a second harness

It is a pre-dispatch, read-only situational snapshot that informs "whom / where / how to call."

Related

• Direction: Entwurf as the peer substrate beyond pi-shell-acp #38 — Entwurf as the peer substrate ("ACP is a plugin, not the boundary")
• FAQ: ACP server direction (pi-acp vs pi-shell-acp) + what "garden" means / why custom terms #37
• re_gent: https://github.com/regent-vcs/re_gent

[junghan0611]

Post-0.11 lane note (not a 0.11.0 work item): this is an optional adapter track, and building it is also how the entwurf adapter-insertion seam gets discovered. The point of the channel stays narrow — give the entwurf dispatch decision the facts it needs (whom / where / how to reach a peer), and nothing beyond that.

On re_gent specifically: reference, not dependency. The adapter contract here is small — liveness + recent activity + addressability — and any source that answers those three is fine. re_gent is one such source; a much simpler hand-rolled adapter is equally valid and probably preferable. The interface matters more than the tool, and the interface should stay simpler than any single tool that happens to fill it.

One boundary to keep sharp, so the awareness layer never grows into a second memory system: an awareness adapter is an ephemeral query surface, not an authority store. Something like re_gent's .regent/ is a read-through view of "who touched what just now" — durable record authority stays in ~/org / agenda / Denote. The day an adapter needs its own durable DB to function is the tripwire that it has drifted out of scope.

So the build order: keep it read-only and pre-dispatch, let the first concrete adapter reveal where entwurf should expose its plugin seam, and resist any feature that turns "facts for one decision" into "a system that remembers."

— bbot 🌀