Learn the method, and meet the agents that design and build your teams
How is an agent team designed, and who does each part?
- Source
- Internal's lesson, src/sara-week3/internal/lessons/anw-w3-l01.md (Internal b518c35b, 2026-10-22 17:15), read by md_week3.py.
- Copy
- Current Markdown is vendored byte for byte from the Internal commit in Source by vendor_week3.py. Historical publication records: 10-06 Exercise 1 with Sara's yes; 10-07 Exercise 2 and the Module 2 send-route and follow-up fixes, student 58c60d50; 10-08 Exercise 3 and the l05/l11 diagram fixes, student 55061386. Those records do not qualify later Outlook changes. Module 3 and 4 drawings are rendered from the Mermaid in the lesson file (md_week3.py --figures).
- Prompts
- Word for word from the lesson file Internal ships (course/workforce/week3/). Not run end to end from Learn.
- Checked in the app
- Not checked in the app from Learn.
- Open to students
- Yes.
- Other view
- one scroll (one part at a time is the lesson; one scroll is kept to compare)
Staff review only: full controlling prompt. Students paste only the short request below.
Use the native aibl-the-professor agent to guide Week 3 Module 1 Lesson 1, Learn the method, and meet the agents that design and build your teams. Read course/workforce/week3/lessons/anw-w3-l01.md completely and the native aibl-course-guide and aibl-lesson-map methods for this app. This lesson teaches; it designs nothing. Do not edit, stage or propose an edit to any agent file, skill, charter.md, the roster, the registry, the library or any runs/ folder. Do not bound or design anything yourself: defining the edges and the outcome and designing a team is the Architect (Archie)'s work later this week. This lesson saves nothing. This lesson does not call Archie; that comes later this week.
Use these words exactly. A department is a group of agents that work on related jobs, and the area of the owner's work they serve, such as Marketing or Customer Support. A work stream is one recurring piece of end-to-end work inside a department, from something arriving to a result someone receives. A job is one run of a work stream. A workflow is the path a job takes, step by step. This week the owner gets three agent teams, each inside the department it belongs to: an email team they customize (Customize), a team they build with Archie and Gigawatt for a work stream of their own (Build), and a team the Chief of Staff builds overnight (Delegate). Part 2 is about the work stream for the team they build. Never call the thing they build a workflow.
Part 2 is practice, out loud. Ask open questions only in this part: no numbered choices and no example answers for the owner's own edges, outcome or decisions, whatever your usual style. Read back, read only, the owner's dated "End of Week 2" note from work/course/staff/progress.md (the idea, what is missing, and the first try), in their exact words and with the file it came from. If there is no such note, read back the Week 3 need sentence in the same file instead and say which you used. If neither is there, say so and where you looked; never reconstruct it. Treat it as a starting point, not a limit. The idea line already names what starts it, what finishes it and who receives the result: ask the owner to test those edges first, then add what is left out and which department it belongs to. Then ask them to say, in their own words, the edges of the work stream they have in mind (what starts a job, what finishes it and who receives it, what is left out, which department it belongs to), then an outcome, then one decision that stays theirs. After each answer, say which of the lesson's tests it meets and which it misses (edges: too small, too big; outcome: specific, measurable, about the result). Never supply the answer, never rewrite it, and never save it. Remind them once that they settle these with Archie later this week.
Part 3. Open the Architect (Archie)'s agent file (.claude/agents/aibl-archie.md, or its Codex copy), read only, and show the owner its description line, the section on the interview, the quick-or-careful section and "What you never do", quoting exactly. Explain each in plain words. Then explain how Archie differs from the Operator (Gigawatt), from their own files: Archie asks how the work runs today and designs the team; Gigawatt builds on the owner's yes. Do not call Archie.
Part 4. Open .claude/agents/aibl-gigawatt.md (or its Codex copy), read only, and show its description line, item 1 (Setup) of "Your job, in order", steps 3, 4 and 6 of "How you work", and "What you never do", quoting exactly. Let the owner find the line about when a seat counts as working ("only a live reply counts") before you show it. Do not call Archie or Gigawatt.
Staff only: review scope, dependencies, changes. Not student-facing.
What has been reviewed, and what has not
DRAFT. Agent files can still change. Every claim about an agent on this page was checked against the agent files on internal origin/main on 1 October 2026. Tyler’s audit of the agents against Week 3 has not happened yet, so any of those claims can go stale. Re-check them against the files before this page ships.
Draft for Sara's sign-off. Rebuilt 29 September. Nothing here has been run against an agent. The controlling prompt and every paste block are placeholders for Hunter's prompt pass.
Rulings this page is built on
The Professor teaches; the working agents work (Sara, 29 September). Checked against the agent files: bounding a process is the Process Analyst (Cipher)'s first step (“Bound it: what starts it, the useful result, who receives that result, where it ends, and the neighboring work you are leaving out”); defining the outcome is the Architect (Archie)'s phases 1 and 2 (“Define good before choosing seats”). So edges, outcome and the decisions that stay the owner's are taught and practised out loud here, and decided with Archie in Module 3. Readiness (now the end of Archie's first-draft lesson in Module 3, spine v2) is read from Archie's own status line: “Draft” while a critical gap is open, “Ready for the owner's review” when none is (aibl-archie.md, Status). Archie is called directly (Sara, 30 September); mapping goes through the Chief of Staff in careful mode (“take your time on this one”), the Week 2 route.
Earlier builds, superseded. A version where The Professor drafted the workflow, one where the student saved a work stream breakdown, and a diagnosis part (cut: “more confusing”). Week 2 output is a starting point, not a limit.
Method and vocabulary (Sara, 29 September). Foundations 2.0's outcome, flow, roles, handoffs is Module 1's spine, drawn as a diagram. Roles line and hiring line are Sara's wording. Department, work stream, job, workflow and agent team as defined in Part 1; department builds on Week 2's “a group of agents that work on related jobs”.
Examples. One example runs through the whole lesson: posting to social media about client wins, Sara's own (29 September). The seven steps and the outcome rewrites illustrate the form
Sources
Live Week 2, internal student/agent-workforce/course/workforce/week2/ on origin/main: “Chief of Staff coordinates the work. The Professor guides you through the lessons” (anw-w2-m0.md); the mapping job through the Chief of Staff and the map at runs/<job>/process/process-map.md or a later version (anw-l17.md); the approved SOP at library/originals/exports/<job>-approved-sop.md (anw-l19.md); the need sentence, progress.md and context/handoff.md, and “In Week 3, Chief decides who picks up the need” (anw-l21.md).
Agent files on internal origin/main: aibl-cipher.md (Bound it; marks; needs three to five completed examples or run history); aibl-archie.md (phases 1 and 2; interviews only when the owner picks it; reads a Cipher process map as evidence).
Foundations 2.0, Week 2 Module 2: the four steps, the outcome test, the hiring analogy.
Week 1 (module1/anw-l03.md): the before photo; measured, estimated or not measured.
Dependencies (hidden markers in the Markdown)
dep-13: The Professor's lesson map still lists the old Week 3. Owner: Tyler.
Closed: dep-17. The Professor's file allows reading runs/ and library/. It cannot read context/, so the need sentence is read from progress.md only.
The Professor's question style. Its file prefers numbered multiple-choice questions. The controlling prompt overrides that for Part 2 (open questions only). Hunter to confirm it holds when run.
Promises to later lessons (law 13). “Week 4 compares your agent team against it” and the Next line (the goals and loops lesson, written 1 October) are kept only when those lessons are written. Check both then.
Lesson and prompt files must reach course/workforce/week3/ in the workbench. Owner: Hunter.
Moved to Module 3 (spine v2, 1 October): the Archie readiness check, so students learn roles, handoffs and the seven tests before Archie drafts. Parked in source/parked_for_l03_archie_readiness.py. dep-18 travels with it: untested that Archie runs the thread when picked from the @ list, honours “keep it short”, and writes the status its file describes; and, in Codex, whether Archie asked for by name (“Have aibl-archie handle this.”) can ask the owner its questions itself, which Archie's file does not say. Owner: Hunter.
Week 2's closing line stays (“In Week 3, Chief decides who picks up the need”). Sara, 1 October: once the teams are built, the owner gives the Chief of Staff directions and it routes each job to the right team. Drop it from the Slack draft to Hunter.
Three teams (spine v2, 1 October). Reframed for the team built for you, the team built with Archie and Gigawatt, and the team the Chief of Staff builds overnight. Part 2 stays about the team the student builds. Archie's first draft moved to Module 3 (V2). The overnight team depends on dependency 12 in spine v2. The core agents table’s “Which of your teams” column is from spine v2; who designs inside the overnight build is open (Tyler question 3), so the overnight row names no designing agent.
Reads the End of Week 2 note (Sara, 1 October). Live Week 2 now closes with anw-w2-close, which saves a dated “End of Week 2” note to work/course/staff/progress.md: the idea (what starts it, what finishes it, who receives the result), what is missing, and the first try. Part 2 reads it back and has the student test those edges; the need sentence is the fallback.
Cut 1 October (Sara): the Week 2 map check and the before-number. Week 2 hands Week 3 its need sentence (anw-l21: “Week 3 starts from that need”), which feeds only the team the student builds; the Week 2 map covers the process chosen earlier in Week 2, often different work, and Archie treats a map as optional evidence (aibl-archie.md, “only what the work order or the owner names”) and asks what happens today itself. The before-number moves to the start of Module 3, before Archie. The version with those parts is in commit 0676f8ac. Cipher dropped from the build path (Sara, 1 October, option A): Archie frames the job and asks what happens today itself (aibl-archie.md, step 1), so the path is Archie designs, Gigawatt builds, the Chief of Staff routes.
This week you get three agent teams: an email team you customize, one you build with the agents, and one your organization builds overnight.
We don’t build agent teams by starting with the agents. Agent teams are designed with a four-step method: outcome, flow, roles, handoffs.
Today you learn what good looks like for those steps, so you have the mental model to build out your own agent teams. You practise on the work stream for the team you build.
You meet the Architect (Archie), which designs the team you build, and the Operator (Gigawatt), which builds it.
The method, the tests for good edges and a good outcome, and how your core agents work together, including the two that design and build your teams.
You can only judge Archie's design if you know what a good one looks like.
The Course Companion (The Professor) teaches each step, checks your practice answers, and opens Archie’s and Gigawatt’s files with you.
You practise the thinking on your own work. Nothing is designed or saved today.
Before you start
The Professor reads back the note you saved at the end of Week 2: your idea for Week 3.
Have one recent job from this work in mind. If you kept the email, file or calendar entry from it, have it open.
Start or resume this lesson
Open your prepared workbench and call the Course Companion (The Professor) by its role name, aibl-the-professor. Paste only this.
Use the native aibl-the-professor agent to start the Week 3 lesson "Learn the method, and meet the agents that design and build your teams". Read course/workforce/week3/prompts/anw-w3-l01.txt and course/workforce/week3/lessons/anw-w3-l01.md. Ask me one question at a time and wait. Change nothing in my workbench.
Department, work stream, job and workflow
A department holds work streams. A work stream runs as jobs. Each job follows a workflow.
Take one work stream as the example: posting to social media about client wins. Follow it down the table.
| Word | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Department | In Week 2 you saw a department as a group of agents that work on related jobs. Here it also means the area of your work those agents serve. It never finishes, and it holds several work streams. | Marketing |
| Work stream | One piece of work that comes round again and again, from something arriving to a result someone receives. | Posting to social media about client wins |
| Job | One run of a work stream. You gave your organization its first job in Week 1. | This week's post about a client win |
| Workflow | The path a job takes, step by step. | Spot the win, get the facts, draft the post, check it, you approve, it goes out |
An agent team is the agents that carry one work stream from start to finish.
Your three agent teams this week
This week you get three agent teams. Each one comes with less help from you.
| Team | What happens | Who does the work |
|---|---|---|
| Customize | We give you an email team. You connect it to your inbox and tools, teach it how you write, and run three observational evals on your own email. | Gigawatt customizes it with you, on your yes. |
| Build | A team for a work stream of your own. You design it with the Architect (Archie), and Gigawatt builds it. | Archie designs, Gigawatt builds. |
| Delegate | Your Chief of Staff builds and tests a third team while you’re away. You check it when you’re back. | The Chief of Staff routes the build to the agents that design, build and check, on the brief you give it. |
You design the second team yourself, with Archie. The method below is how.
The four-step method for designing an agent team
Most people start building an agent team by deciding which agents they want. That gets it backwards.
A better way is to start from the work. Look at the outcome you need and the work it takes. Then break that work down to find which agents are needed.
The four steps do that, in order.
The four-step method for designing an agent team.Always in this order.
- STEP 1OutcomeWhat the work stream exists to produce, stated so you'd know if it worked.
- STEP 2FlowWhat actually happens in a job, step by step. Your workflow.
- STEP 3RolesThe kinds of work the steps need. The roles inform the agent profiles.
- STEP 4HandoffsWhat each role passes to the next, so nothing gets lost between them.
Diagram: The four-step method for designing an agent team. Always in this order.
- Outcome: What the work stream exists to produce, stated so you'd know if it worked.
- Flow: What actually happens in a job, step by step. Your workflow.
- Roles: The kinds of work the steps need. The roles inform the agent profiles.
- Handoffs: What each role passes to the next, so nothing gets lost between them.
Hiring works the same way. First you work out the work that needs doing in a department. Then you decide which roles it needs.
The Architect (Archie) designs in this same order. When you call it yourself, it works through the steps with you, one question at a time. You do that later this week, for the team you build.
Today you learn what good answers look like, so you can judge Archie’s questions and its design.
Next part: Good edges, a good outcome, and the decisions that stay yours
Good edges
The edges of a work stream are where a job starts, where it ends, and what's left out. Have an answer to each of these four questions before you design a team.
- What starts a job? A message arrives, a client signs, the month ends.
- What finishes a job, and who receives it? An end result, like a sent reply, a published post or a signed proposal.
- What's deliberately left out? Paid ads, for example, if another work stream runs them.
- Which department does it belong to? Customer Support, Marketing, Operations.
Archie asks you about the end first: who receives the result, and what done looks like.
Two tests tell you whether the edges are in the right place.
Too small: it's a single step. One skill could do it. “Draft the post” is too small.
Too big: it's several work streams, each with its own start and its own result. “All of Marketing's content” is too big. That's several teams.
Your Week 2 SOP may cover only part of your work stream. Take the same example: posting to social media about client wins. Say your Week 2 SOP covered getting the facts, asking the client, drafting and checking. The whole work stream has seven steps.
The seven steps of posting to social media about a client win.The Week 2 SOP in this example covered steps 2 to 5.
- 1Hear about a client win
- 2Get the facts and numbers from the project
- 3Ask the client if you can name them
- 4Draft the post
- 5Check it for facts and tone
- 6You approve it
- 7Post it
Diagram: The seven steps of posting to social media about a client win. The Week 2 SOP in this example covered steps 2 to 5.
- Hear about a client win
- Get the facts and numbers from the project
- Ask the client if you can name them
- Draft the post
- Check it for facts and tone
- You approve it
- Post it
Steps 1, 6 and 7 still happen every time. You'd keep step 6, approving, on purpose. But a team built only for steps 2 to 5 would also leave spotting the win and posting with you, without anyone deciding that.
A good outcome
The outcome is what the work stream exists to produce. Every design decision maps back to it. A good outcome passes three tests:
- Specific. Not “better LinkedIn presence”.
- Measurable. How would you know it worked? What number moves?
- About the result, not the method. What someone receives, not how the agents produce it.
| Fails the tests | Passes |
|---|---|
| Post more on LinkedIn | One post a week about a client win, published within ten days of the win |
| Better client-win posts | Every post approved on the first draft, with no facts to correct |
The decisions that stay yours
Some steps you'd never let anyone else sign off: the price, what goes to a client, anything about money. Your team will stop and ask you at those points. Know which they are before Archie asks.
Do this now
Practise on your idea from Week 2
The Professor reads back the note you saved at the end of Week 2: your idea for Week 3, what your organization is missing for it, and the first thing you want to try. Your idea already says what starts it, what finishes it and who receives the result. Use it as a starting point, not a limit.
Test those edges against the two tests above. Then say what’s left out, which department it belongs to, an outcome, and one decision that stays yours. The Professor tells you which tests they pass. It doesn’t write them for you.
Nothing gets saved here. You settle the edges and the outcome with Archie later this week.
Say this to the Course Companion (The Professor):
Read back my End of Week 2 note, and where it came from. Then let me test the edges of my idea, and say what's left out, an outcome, and one decision that stays mine. Tell me which tests each one passes. Don't write them for me and don't save anything.
Next part: Meet the Architect (Archie), and see how your core agents work together
Your core agents this week
You've worked with most of these in Week 1 and Week 2. When you build a team with Archie and Gigawatt, they hand work to each other, one after another.
| Agent | What it does this week | What it hands on | Which of your teams |
|---|---|---|---|
| Course Companion (The Professor) Faculty | Guides you through each lesson and keeps your course notes. | Your progress note | All three |
| Chief of Staff Your organization | Routes every job: writes the work order, shows you the plan, waits for your go. | Work orders, and each job's folder | All three |
| Architect (Archie) Faculty | Designs the agent team: which agents, in what order, what each hands the next. | The design | The team you build |
| Operator (Gigawatt) Faculty | Builds each agent in the design, on your yes, and sets up tools. | Your new agents | All three |
| Knowledge Librarian (Sallee) Your organization | Files what your team needs to know into your library. | Your library | Any team that needs something filed |
| Quality Reviewer (Kansa) Your organization | Checks work independently, never its own. | Reviews | All three |
Faculty help you learn and set up. They do none of your work. The others are part of your organization.
How the core agents’ work feeds into each other when you build a team with Archie and Gigawatt.You give the yes at every step.
- 1Archieasks how the work runs today, and designs the team
- 2Gigawattbuilds each agent on your yes
- 3Chief of Staffroutes jobs through your new team
Diagram: How the core agents’ work feeds into each other when you build a team with Archie and Gigawatt. You give the yes at every step.
- Archie: asks how the work runs today, and designs the team
- Gigawatt: builds each agent on your yes
- Chief of Staff: routes jobs through your new team
The design and the new agents are files. Each agent reads what the one before it saved.
Meet Archie
You saw Archie in the tour of your organization in Week 2. This week is the first time you work with it.
Its file describes how it designs: “the outcome, then the flow, then the seats, then the handoffs, then how anyone will know it worked.” That's the four-step method from Part 1, with a check at the end. Seats are Archie's word for agents.
How it works with you:
- It asks one question at a time and waits for your answer.
- It starts from what's already written, like your End of Week 2 note, and asks only what's missing.
- Every few answers, it plays back what it has understood and asks what it missed.
- If you say “keep it short”, it asks at most ten questions before its first draft.
What it never does: the work itself, building anything (that's Gigawatt, on your yes), or deciding for you. It offers choices and the reason for each. The decisions stay yours.
It only asks you questions when you call it in yourself. Sent by the Chief of Staff, it can't ask you anything.
Do this now
Open Archie's file with The Professor
The Professor opens Archie’s agent file and walks you through it. You read an agent’s file this way in Week 1.
Say this to the Course Companion (The Professor):
Open the Architect (Archie)'s agent file and show me its description line, how it works with me, and what it never does. Then tell me in plain words how Archie is different from Gigawatt.
Next part: Meet the Operator (Gigawatt), the agent that builds your agents
Meet Gigawatt, the agent that builds
You’ve worked with the Operator (Gigawatt) before. In Week 2 it showed you your registry. This week it builds the agents in your teams.
How it builds:
- It builds each new agent in a holding folder in your job’s folder first. Nothing goes straight into your organization.
- It runs a check on each agent and shows you the result. If the check fails, it fixes one thing and checks again. After that, it brings the problem to you.
- It counts an agent as working only when the agent answers in your app. A file that looks right isn’t enough.
- It tells you exactly what it will put where, and waits for your yes in the conversation. A yes written in a document doesn’t count.
What it never does: your work (that’s the Chief of Staff’s), sending anything, signing you in, or installing anything without saying what and why.
Gigawatt builds with the Fisk Method, eight phases from rough idea to working agent: Prime, Align, Research, Generate, Evaluate, Iterate, Document, Deploy. Iterate is the same TOAST loop you use in your observational evals.
Archie designs. Gigawatt builds what you approve.
Do this now
Open Gigawatt's file with The Professor
The Professor opens Gigawatt’s agent file and walks you through it. Find the line that says when it counts an agent as working.
Say this to the Course Companion (The Professor):
Open the Operator (Gigawatt)'s agent file and show me its description line, the setup job in 'Your job, in order', the steps in 'How you work' where it runs the check and asks for my yes, and 'What you never do'. Let me find the line that says when it counts an agent as working before you show me.
Next part: You're done
Where to look when it goes wrong
| What you notice | First question |
|---|---|
| The Professor wrote my edges or outcome for me, or gave me options to pick from | Ask it to stop. You're practising the thinking. Archie asks you about them later this week. |
| I keep naming agents | Say what happens instead. Which agent does what is Archie's question. |
What you'll keep
The method, and what good answers look like at each step. Nothing gets saved into your organization in this lesson.
Before you finish
You can say what a department, a work stream, a job and a workflow are, and name the four steps of the method in order.
You can say what good edges and a good outcome look like, and test your own.
You can name the decisions in your work that stay yours.
You can name your three agent teams this week, say what each core agent does, and how Archie and Gigawatt work with you.
Next: what tells an agent it’s done. You write a goal for one of your jobs, and start and stop a loop yourself.
Words you now own
- department
- work stream
- job
- workflow
- agent team
- outcome, flow, roles, handoffs
- the edges
- decisions that stay yours
- Faculty
On your screen when this ends · 3 checks
- I can explain the four-step method and test edges and an outcome against it
- I can name the decisions in my work that stay mine
- I can say how Gigawatt builds an agent, and that it counts one as working only when it answers in my app
Self-assessed. No gate.