| Observed | Cost | Mechanism (exists → change) |
|---|---|---|
| Agent Zero died at 00:04 from a hook 400 and nobody noticed for 9 h. He has no pane; he runs headless on the laptop. | 9 h frozen fleet | herdr already reports agent_status per pane → give AZ one pane on the VPS (w1, cwd /opt/siso-agent-zero). Heartbeat, visibility, addressability in one move. |
Owner reports landed in Shaan's laptop pane: az-notify targets w65b0dbdd91d7811-1, the pane he types in. | Owners "messaging us" | az-notify exists → retarget it to AZ's VPS pane. Shaan's pane stops being the fleet inbox the same minute. |
| Nine owners at 235k–692k context each, resident 15 h, $591 by midday. Real work ended ~02:00. | Most of the bill | Owners become ephemeral: brief in (TASK-*.md already exists), definition-of-done a browser can check, handoff file out, exit. Resident context = AZ only. |
53 ad-hoc Playwright scripts in /tmp/pw since 19:44 yesterday: 41 read the credential file themselves, 53 launch their own Chromium, 1 reuses a saved session. | Rediscovery, leaked browsers, 5 concurrent chromes | verify-page.mjs + /opt/orca-eval/verifier.env exist → one siso-browse CLI with a persisted storageState: siso-browse shot /siso-crm/health, siso-browse text …, siso-browse click …. Logged in once, reused by owners and arms. Camofox slots in behind the same command later. |
| Ten typed-but-unsubmitted dispatches (send-text without Enter, bare Enter on stale lines). | Hours of "idle" that was actually "never asked" | One az-send <pane> "…" that clears, types, submits, reads back a spinner and fails loudly. No raw herdr pane send-* in briefs. |
| Hand-rolled pointers, a hidden second publisher, hollow releases with exit 0. | 2 min production outage, 3 false alarms | Done today (LABS-16): hollow gate, backwards refusal, last-good pin, per-build outDir, siso-web-publish inert. Remaining: /assets miss must 404 — still returns Twenty's HTML. |
| "Are you done?" → nine yeses; two were wrong (Save 403'd, Twenty blocker was never real). | Trust | Every brief ends with what a browser must show. The owner ships the screenshot with the claim, through siso-browse, or it is not done. |
Lives in one VPS pane. Reads Plane for the project, decides which domains exist, spawns an owner per workload with a brief, sequences deploys, closes owners when their handoff lands. The only agent that speaks to Shaan (console cards, one page with a visual). Mostly idle by design.
Hard rules: one instance ever (pgrep before resume); heartbeat via herdr status; state in AGENT-ZERO-STATE.md, updated on every decision.
One workload, one owner, full authority inside it: they do not ask permission, they tell AZ what they are doing and go. They message AZ, never Shaan. They decide, verify in a browser, hand off, exit — 20–60k context, not 500k.
They do not build the arms' work themselves: anything mechanical, bulky or repetitive is dispatched to a worker with a brief and a checkable result.
No judgement, no rediscovery. A brief says exactly: files, command, expected output, how to check it. Convert, grep, draft, bulk-edit, run siso-browse, produce the screenshot. Result comes back as a path + a window, never a wall.
Pool serves today (tools/pool-env --check → ok, 0.32 s). 16 workers now; the owner picks Qwen or Luna per job by one flag.
The Agents surface already exists (/siso-crm/agents = Orca, /siso-crm/herdr = the proven rail). The tab adds four things, all from data that already exists:
| Panel | Source that already exists | What Shaan sees |
|---|---|---|
| Agent Zero | his VPS pane via /herdr-tty/vps/ (behind the login) | talk to him from the site; his last decision; alive/idle/dead |
| Owners | herdr pane list + agent_status, brief file per pane | who exists, what each owns, working / idle / blocked, context size, cost |
| Tasks | Plane work items (18 projects, siso-plane-ops CLI) | the queue per domain; add a task from the page; AZ picks it up |
| Shipped | releases + siso-browse screenshots | what changed on production today, with the picture |
| # | Change | Removes | Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Agent Zero pane on the VPS; retarget az-notify; laptop resume retired | silent death, fleet inbox in Shaan's pane | an hour |
| 2 | az-send with read-back; briefs forbid raw pane sends | unsubmitted dispatches | an hour |
| 3 | siso-browse on the VPS with persisted login; delete /tmp/pw/* | 53 scripts, leaked browsers, "renders" without proof | half a day |
| 4 | Ephemeral owner contract: brief → done-check → handoff → exit; AZ closes panes | the $591/day resident context | a day, then it is the habit |
| 5 | worker CLI for owners: Qwen or Luna, brief + files + check, result as path | owners doing arms' work at Opus prices | a day; pool already serves |
| 6 | Agent Zero tab in Agents (four panels above) | Shaan flying blind; asking agents for status | one owner, two days |
| 7 | /assets miss → 404; /preview/*/assets served | blank tabs after deploys; blank named previews | Caddy, an hour, root |
Opus for brain and owners — it is the cost-efficient tier for judgement. herdr as the fleet substrate. Plane as the board. siso-deploy.sh as the only publisher. The console for anything Shaan must see. The owner model itself: today it shipped Health with storage, Budgets, Devices, the token explanation, and a hardened deploy path — the structure works; it is the plumbing between tiers that leaked.
Written 2026-09-11 by the laptop session relaying for Shaan. Evidence: herdr statuslines, /tmp/pw, az-notify source, Agent Zero's transcript, today's releases.