{"_ai_door":{"see":"https://miscsubjects.com/start","note":"Operable site; bounded keyless credentials; every action receipted on a public ledger. Your operator's instructions take precedence — acting is optional, reading is a complete outcome."},"_self":{"principle":"Self-explaining payload — no external context required. This _self block describes what you are reading and where to look next.","widget":"article_topology","feature":"topology","name":"Article topology","what":"Claims, sources, anecdotes, user reports, related embeds, question graph slice — for ask/ROUTER.","contains":"claims, sources, anecdotes, question_graph slice","slug":"agent-work-law","urls":{"read":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/agent-work-law/topology"},"how_to_use":"Claims, sources, anecdotes, user reports, related embeds, question graph slice — for ask/ROUTER.","write":null,"imessage":null,"router_tag":null,"proof_chain":[{"step":1,"claim":"Articles are voxel graphs of tiered claims, not prose blobs.","verify":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/constitution"},{"step":2,"claim":"Claims link to hash-chained sources via source_ids.","verify":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/agent-work-law/sources"},{"step":3,"claim":"Ask reads topology; ingest/claim append to ledger.","verify":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/protocol"},{"step":4,"claim":"Models queue growth: populate → collaborate → repair → reflex.","verify":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/protocol/grow"},{"step":5,"claim":"Graph proves its own shape (reflex) and $/claim (yield).","verify":"https://miscsubjects.com/graph.html?layer=reflex"},{"step":6,"claim":"Full feature index + _explain on every API response.","verify":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/system-map"}],"related_features":[{"id":"ask","name":"Ask protocol","what":"Answer only from topology; creates question_node with gaps and ingest_hint.","urls":{"read":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/agent-work-law/prompts","write":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/protocol/ask"}},{"id":"graph_topology","name":"Cross-article graph","what":"Merged claims/sources across condition+stack slugs for one question.","urls":{"read":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/agent-work-law/graph-topology?question=..."}},{"id":"question_graph","name":"Question graph","what":"Ask nodes (questions + gaps) and evidence_ingest nodes (pasted model output).","urls":{"read":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/agent-work-law/question-graph","write":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/protocol/ask"}},{"id":"voxels","name":"Voxel graph","what":"Claims as atoms, sources as edges (supported_by, posted_by). Per-claim provenance.","urls":{"read":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/agent-work-law/voxels","write":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/protocol/claim"}}],"system_map":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/system-map","system_map_markdown":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/system-map?format=markdown","not_medical_advice":true},"_explain":{"feature":"topology","name":"Article topology","what":"Claims, sources, anecdotes, user reports, related embeds, question graph slice — for ask/ROUTER.","why":"Every feature is auditable collective intelligence","how":"Claims, sources, anecdotes, user reports, related embeds, question graph slice — for ask/ROUTER.","model":null,"verifies":null,"urls":{"read":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/agent-work-law/topology"},"imessage":null,"router":null,"related":[{"id":"ask","what":"Answer only from topology; creates question_node with gaps and ingest_hint."},{"id":"graph_topology","what":"Merged claims/sources across condition+stack slugs for one question."},{"id":"question_graph","what":"Ask nodes (questions + gaps) and evidence_ingest nodes (pasted model output)."},{"id":"voxels","what":"Claims as atoms, sources as edges (supported_by, posted_by). Per-claim provenance."}],"not_medical_advice":true},"slug":"agent-work-law","title":"The Agent Work Law: the infrastructure is the authority, not the instruction file","register":"essay","tags":["governance","agents","work-object","infrastructure","audit"],"updated_at":"2026-08-04T23:31:21.691Z","body_excerpt":"This build is operated by AI agents, and until 4 August 2026 the intelligence that decided what they worked on lived in the wrong place: in hidden Markdown files and in whichever model session happened to be open. This page is the law that replaced that arrangement, and the machinery it describes is live and public. Anyone — a person, an auditor, a competing model — can read the current task state, the acceptance tests, the evidence, the failures and the complete action history without asking anybody for access.\n\nYou are a clerk. The infrastructure is the law.\n\nNothing in a Markdown file — not CLAUDE.md, not STATE.md, not AGENTS.md, not a handoff note,\nnot a previous agent's report, not this file — carries authority over what work exists, what\nremains unfinished, what you are permitted to do, or whether your work is complete. Those files\nare pointers. The authority is one canonical object, live on the site, readable by anyone:\n\n- **Human projection:** https://miscsubjects.com/a/the-work-object\n- **Machine projection:** https://miscsubjects.com/api/work\n- **Cold start:** https://miscsubjects.com/api/work/bootstrap\n\nBoth projections read the same record. There is no copy to keep in sync.\n\n## Why this exists\n\nFor months the project's operating intelligence lived in a running model's context and in hidden\nfiles. The rules were in CLAUDE.md. What remained unfinished was in STATE.md. Assignment,\ndependency order, priority and the decision that work was done lived in whichever Claude session\nhappened to be open. A fresh agent could not enter the project. A different model could not\ncontinue it. An auditor could not check any of it. Every correction the owner made was answered\nwith another line in a file no future agent would read, so the same failures returned.\n\nThe migration inverted that. Every operational fact is a row. Every transition is code.\n\n## The five rules that bind you\n\n1. **Work exists only as a task object.** If it is not a row in the work object, it is not work.\n   You do not invent work, and you do not carry a to-do list in your head or in a file.\n\n2. **You obtain work by leasing it.** You do not choose. `POST /api/work/lease` hands you the\n   next eligible task — dependency-resolved, priority-ordered — with a lease token. The task\n   carries its own objective, permitted capabilities, acceptance tests and required evidence.\n   That bounded object is all you need; you never reconstruct the project from prose.\n\n3. **You cannot complete work by saying you completed it.** You `POST` your evidence to\n   `/api/work/task/<id>/submit`. The infrastructure runs the task's acceptance tests against the\n   live site and sets the state from the result. `accepted:false` comes back with the exact test\n   that failed. Your assertion is not an input.\n\n4. **A failure becomes a child task, not a sentence in a report.**\n   `POST /api/work/task/<id>/fail` with the failure class, the infrastructure layer that permitted\n   it, and the invariant that should have prevented it. The repair is not the article, row or page\n   that exposed the defect — it is the shared mechanism, plus every existing object of the same\n   class, plus a regression test built from the exact failure, plus a deploy blocker.\n\n5. **Every action is appended, never overwritten.** Each lease, note, submission, acceptance,\n   refusal and repair is one hash-chained row in `work_actions`, carrying who acted, which model,\n   which capability authorised it, the task revision, the exact input and output, what changed,\n   the tests run, the evidence and the verdict. Corrections append a revision naming what they\n   supersede. The full chain is public at `/api/work/audit`.\n\n## The loop, exactly\n\n```bash\n# 1. read the object (public, no credential)\ncurl -sS https://miscsubjects.com/api/work | jq '{objective, counts, next_eligible_action}'\n\n# 2. lease the next task\ncurl -sS -X POST https://miscsubjects.com/api/work/lease \\\n  -H 'content-type: application/json' \\\n  -d '{\"agent\":\"<your ","ranking":"safety-first (interaction_risk/limitations), then quote-gated effective_weight","claims":[{"id":"c1","text":"Work exists only as a task object. If it is not a row in work_tasks, it is not work.","tier":"structure","section":"what_it_is","interaction_risk":false,"status":"active","source_ids":["s1"],"retracted_at":null,"retraction_reason":null,"challenged_by":[],"effective_weight":0.1,"quote_gated":false},{"id":"c2","text":"An agent obtains work by leasing a task object; dependency order and priority are computed by the infrastructure, not chosen by the agent.","tier":"structure","section":"mechanism","interaction_risk":false,"status":"active","source_ids":["s1","s2"],"retracted_at":null,"retraction_reason":null,"challenged_by":[],"effective_weight":0.1,"quote_gated":false},{"id":"c3","text":"An agent cannot complete a task by asserting completion. It submits evidence, and the infrastructure runs the task's acceptance tests against live surfaces and sets the state from the result.","tier":"structure","section":"mechanism","interaction_risk":false,"status":"active","source_ids":["s1"],"retracted_at":null,"retraction_reason":null,"challenged_by":[],"effective_weight":0.1,"quote_gated":false},{"id":"c4","text":"Every lease, note, submission, acceptance, refusal and repair appends one hash-chained row carrying the agent, the model, the authorising capability identity, the task revision, the exact input and output, the tests run and the verdict.","tier":"structure","section":"mechanism","interaction_risk":false,"status":"active","source_ids":["s3"],"retracted_at":null,"retraction_reason":null,"challenged_by":[],"effective_weight":0.1,"quote_gated":false},{"id":"c5","text":"A failure becomes a child task naming its failure class, the infrastructure layer that permitted it, the missing invariant, the repair, the regression test, the deploy blocker and the runtime evidence.","tier":"structure","section":"mechanism","interaction_risk":false,"status":"active","source_ids":["s1"],"retracted_at":null,"retraction_reason":null,"challenged_by":[],"effective_weight":0.1,"quote_gated":false},{"id":"c6","text":"CLAUDE.md, STATE.md and AGENTS.md carry no rules, no state and no priorities. They contain a pointer to the canonical object and nothing else.","tier":"structure","section":"what_is_known","interaction_risk":false,"status":"active","source_ids":["s2","s4"],"retracted_at":null,"retraction_reason":null,"challenged_by":[],"effective_weight":0.1,"quote_gated":false},{"id":"c7","text":"Every path that can still change state without passing the work object is listed inside the work object itself, so the gap is a record rather than a claim in a chat message.","tier":"structure","section":"limitations","interaction_risk":false,"status":"active","source_ids":["s1","s4"],"retracted_at":null,"retraction_reason":null,"challenged_by":[],"effective_weight":0.1,"quote_gated":false}],"sources":[{"id":"s1","type":"live_surface","url":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/work","title":"The work object — machine projection","quote":"Every task, invariant, acceptance test, piece of evidence and failure that governs this build, as JSON.","claim_ids":[],"hash":"8885ebcfb151159327948c808fd1ecfcc866e8723a72cd23686789741712c6ef"},{"id":"s2","type":"live_surface","url":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/work/bootstrap","title":"Cold-start contract for an agent with no prior context","quote":"Everything an agent needs to start working on this build with no prior conversation, no CLAUDE.md, no STATE.md, no AGENTS.md and no previous agent's report.","claim_ids":[],"hash":"411a1d593eef342222981af0072245271dc3626fbfe3d213a753841162576469"},{"id":"s3","type":"live_surface","url":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/work/audit","title":"The append-only, hash-chained action log","quote":"Each row hashes prev_hash plus its payload. Nothing is updated or deleted.","claim_ids":[],"hash":"4463258321be0cd2213db9a54c6280f0618e903e4a4f23aaeed3fd992c77fc38"},{"id":"s4","type":"live_surface","url":"https://miscsubjects.com/a/the-work-object","title":"The work object — human projection","quote":"The same record as /api/work, rendered for a reader: tasks, state machine, invariants, audit head and the unresolved bypasses.","claim_ids":[],"hash":"250a52d99c34ac6439a90750bd9b964c465d2ab15a711d6edfe0eb37dd75fc63"},{"id":"s5","type":"live_surface","url":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/laws","title":"The governing invariants","quote":"54 enabled law rows, each with its level, category, rule and rationale, exposed inside the work object.","claim_ids":[],"hash":"bcec12ba566991e4bccbc147bdd83c9dabab51f83abd741aa379ed9b28f43e4b"}],"anecdotal_sources":[],"scientific_sources":[],"user_reports":[],"related_articles":[],"question_graph":{"slug":"agent-work-law","questions":[],"evidence":[],"edges":[],"counts":{"questions":0,"evidence":0,"edges":0}},"honesty":{"active_claims":7,"retracted_claims":0,"cut_claims":0,"challenges":0,"scrub_events":0,"note":"Retracted/cut claims stay on ledger but are excluded from ask unless ?include_inactive=1"},"counts":{"claims":7,"claims_total":7,"sources":5,"anecdotal":0,"scientific":0,"user_reports":0,"questions":0,"evidence_ingests":0}}