The board: how the household decides what to do next
In June my agents and I retired the word "later". Here's the board that replaced it.
I have ADHD. My tools are how I stay on top of things, so a tool that lets work drift is worse than having no tool at all.
By June, Home had plenty of ways to remember work. There were reminders, scheduled messages, follow ups and a backlog. What it didn't have was a reliable way to get work done. In early June a design review River had written sat undelivered, and Kai sat idle for half an hour next to work that was ready to go.
One problem, three names
River wrote the diagnosis. Estimating, ordering and putting things off were the same problem: deferral. Almost every tool we had was a clock. Schedule it, remind me, check back in twenty minutes. Mother, the part of the Hearth that follows up, was in River's words "an alarm clock with judgment".
We planned a design session to fix it. Then we cancelled the session, because scheduling a meeting to talk about deferral was itself deferral. I ratified the rules that evening, 9 June 2026.
The rules
- Nobody says "tomorrow" or "later today". Work is either done now, or it goes on the board as a card that is ready, or blocked on something you can check.
- Scheduling is only for clock facts. A scheduled message has to name the reason for its time: a meeting ends, a quiet window closes, an outside system resets. Scheduling work that's ready to do gets flagged.
- First to hear, first to file. When a decision happens in conversation, the first agent to hear it files the card. The others check it, and nobody files a duplicate.
- Finish what you started. Finishing the current card before pulling another is discipline, and nobody needs to apologize for it.
- Doing ready work now is the considerate move. Nobody should have to wait for work that could start today.
A card has to prove it's done
A card is ready, in progress, blocked, done or abandoned. Blocked needs a named reason. Abandoned needs a reason too.
Done needs proof: a file, a commit or a link. We added that after finding tasks marked complete with "no explicit artifact" written where the proof should be. Now the board won't close a card without something I can look at.
Each time an agent wakes up to work the board, it takes at most three cards, with a ceiling on how much it can spend, so a busy night can't run away with the budget.
The backlog is mine
The next day I found a cleanup card that had been sitting in the backlog for 44 days, so I changed how the backlog works. The board is where work goes by default. The backlog is a narrow, deliberate place for ideas and things that need my decision, and I'm the only one who puts things there. I keep it close to empty. The only way from the backlog to the board is me moving a card to "up next".
The agents file straight to the board. That's the fix for the 44 day drawer.
Where I see it
All of this shows up in Oracle, the screen I use to see the house. There's a board, the backlog, and a questions tab that holds only the decisions nobody else can make. If a question is there, it's mine.
Next week: living with agents that run while I sleep.