Terminal teams — a crew of agent terminals on the canvas

The surface-map campaign (PR #1714 → W7) was already a one-orchestrator-many-agents operation, run by hand: briefs over kaval-tui send, claims verified at the tree, watchdogs on idle agents. Every seam it exposed is a feature below. The idea: make the crew a first-class, visible thing — teammates spawned beside the orchestrator, the team’s structure drawn on the canvas.

The roadmap

Feature	What it is	Status	Campaign incident it answers
—	padi-tui create --worktree --parent -- <argv> → id; tile identical to browser-created	shipped	(the spawn substrate)
—	kaval-tui send / wait / snapshot — the messaging loop	shipped	(the wire)
F1	create --near <tile> --title <role> — spawn placed next to the orchestrator	delta on padi-tui create, zero new wire surface: read the reference tile’s stored canvasLayout (the terminals collection), offset it, pass it in the EXISTING create input (InitialTerminalMetadataSchema already carries optional canvasLayout — placement atomic with creation, no default-cascade race; repoIslands’ no-reshuffle rule holds)	teammates lost among 40 tiles
F2	Terminal relations: chrome.setRelation {to, kind: delegates|consults|reviews, label} — persisted metadata generalizing sub-terminal parentIdWhy relations are kolu data, not skill state: the roster in the orchestrator’s context dies at every compaction — it did, repeatedly, during the campaign. A relation on the terminal survives compaction, reconnect, and re-keying, and renders for the human. parentId stays separate: containment ≠ collaboration.	new (padi surface + schema)	the team existed only in my context window
F3	Canvas renders F2: edges + role badges, cluster on the minimap	new (client UI; straight lines first, no routing)	same
F4	/goal — a Stop-hook contract: an agent with an unmet goal cannot end its turn without posting a report or a blocked-notice (escapes: done: true, max-nag counter)	new (small skill + hook; useful solo, ships first)	the silent mid-stage stall
/team	The skill composing F1–F4: convene (spawn + relate + brief by role), messaging contract, lifecycle, disband + reap	new (upstreamable to srid/agency)	all of the above, today done by hand

Notes toward /team

• Role presets are data, not code: implementor:worktree (task brief, test-first, own branch) · architect:read-only (consults via /architecture-first-principles) · watchguard:lowy (reviews each push, red-flags to the orchestrator). A role names the skills loaded and the write posture.
• The messaging contract encodes the campaign’s hardest lesson: two-step send + Enter; large payloads as file + pointer; landing verified against the recipient’s transcript, never the send’s exit code.
• Disband = the teardown discipline: kill by captured id, reap worktrees, drop relations. Watchdogs stay even with F4 — detection and prevention are belt and suspenders.
• Done-when for /team: a two-teammate team runs a real small task end-to-end — convened, visible on canvas, stage-reported, disbanded clean — zero manual kaval-tui by the human.

Prior art

• In-repo: the campaign itself (the manual prototype) · /debate --orchestrate (N terminals, turn-files, orchestrator-never-argues) · padi-tui create (the spawn verb) · sub-terminal parentId (a rendered relation) · repoIslands (canvas grouping, the no-reshuffle rule).
• External: Claude Code agent teams — native supervisor+teammates with split-pane visibility; panes are a viewport, kolu’s canvas is a persistent spatial structure (the differentiator). tmux-orchestrator (worktree-per-agent, two-way messaging) · Claude Squad · task-sizing lessons in the code-agent orchestra / swarms (units small enough for check-ins → /team’s stage-boundary contract). Role frameworks (MetaGPT/ChatDev lineage) supply the decomposition; /team rejects the bespoke-runtime posture — teammates are ordinary terminals running ordinary agents.