Forward Deployed Pod
A forward-deployed pod, made of four persona-agents, reviews the current phase's work from four perspectives at once, so no single class of failure slips through. It is the think layer: the pod reasons and recommends. The human decides and holds the gate. It never merges, ships, or acts on its own authority (agency-design Level 1 to 2, never Level 3). It is the concrete multi-perspective verifier that agency-design points to: several advisor lenses check the work before a human looks, then batch to a single verdict and the one highest-leverage fix.
What to do
Find the phase and the target. Read the current phase from .goal/state.json ({ "phase": "...", "project": "..." }). If it is missing, ask the user which phase applies, or default to all four lenses. Identify the target under review: a Goal Brief (Discover), a spec (Specify), a diff or PR (Build), an eval report (Evaluate), a release plan (Deploy), or telemetry and traces (Learn). If the user named an artifact, use it.
Convene the lenses. Read references/phase-lens-matrix.md and select the lenses for the phase. Scale to the stakes: a trivial, reversible change may convene only the lead lens, or skip the pod. Do not run four heavyweight reviews on a one-line change.
Dispatch the convened lenses in parallel. For each convened lens, dispatch a subagent with that role's prompt from references/roles/ (product-manager.md, tech-lead.md, fde.md, domain-business.md) and the target. Run them independently so no lens anchors another.
Synthesize. Merge the findings: deduplicate overlaps, surface disagreements between lenses as explicit tensions (do not average them away), and order by severity (blocker, then important, then minor).
Turn findings into proposed actions. For any finding that implies doing something, emit an ActionRequest following references/action-seam.md (the reference implementation is seam/action_seam.py): set the action, target, rationale, reversible, stakes, and action_class (deterministic or real_world). The pod proposes; it does not execute. Deterministic actions are carried out later by the agent's own tools (Bash, Edit), gated by the permission prompt; real_world actions need an external action runtime (for example Computer Use or a browser MCP) and are surfaced for the human, not run here. Gate everything real-world, irreversible, or above low stakes for human approval, and record every proposed action in the audit.
Write the Pod Review. Fill references/pod-review-template.md, save it as pod-review.md in the working project, and show it to the user. The verdict (ready, ready with fixes, or not ready) names the single highest-leverage fix. The proposed-action queue lists each action with its stakes, class, handler, approval status, and result.
Self-check before you finish
Check the Pod Review against this rubric, and fix anything that fails:
- Every convened lens produced findings.
- Disagreements are surfaced as tensions, not hidden or averaged.
- The verdict names one highest-leverage fix.
- Every proposed action carries stakes, reversibility, class, and approval status.
- Every high-stakes, irreversible, outbound, or real-world action is gated for human approval.
- The review is advisory: no action was taken on the pod's own authority.
Scope to the stakes
Full pod at high-stakes gates (a Discover decision, a spec, a release, an eval verdict). A subset or a single lens for a small, reversible change. The failure mode to avoid is approval-of-everything, which turns the pod itself into the constraint.
See references/examples/jobmate-distractor-filter.md for a worked run across all six phases, including where an external action runtime is needed.
1---2name: forward-deployed-pod3description: Use to review the output of any GOAL phase (a Goal Brief, a spec, a diff or PR, an eval report, a release plan, or telemetry) from four forward-deployed perspectives at once. Convenes a pod of four persona-agents (FD Product Manager, FD Tech Lead, FDE, FD Domain Expert/Business Owner), auto-selecting which lenses matter for the current phase (read from .goal/state.json), and returns one synthesized Pod Review with a verdict and a queue of proposed actions. The pod advises; the human decides and holds the gate. Use when the user asks for a pod review, a multi-perspective review, or to review a phase's work, and at GOAL phase gates.4---56# Forward Deployed Pod78A forward-deployed pod, made of four persona-agents, reviews the current phase's work from four perspectives at once, so no single class of failure slips through. It is the **think** layer: the pod reasons and recommends. The human decides and holds the gate. It never merges, ships, or acts on its own authority (agency-design Level 1 to 2, never Level 3). It is the concrete multi-perspective verifier that `agency-design` points to: several advisor lenses check the work before a human looks, then batch to a single verdict and the one highest-leverage fix.910## What to do11121. **Find the phase and the target.** Read the current phase from `.goal/state.json` (`{ "phase": "...", "project": "..." }`). If it is missing, ask the user which phase applies, or default to all four lenses. Identify the target under review: a Goal Brief (Discover), a spec (Specify), a diff or PR (Build), an eval report (Evaluate), a release plan (Deploy), or telemetry and traces (Learn). If the user named an artifact, use it.13142. **Convene the lenses.** Read `references/phase-lens-matrix.md` and select the lenses for the phase. Scale to the stakes: a trivial, reversible change may convene only the lead lens, or skip the pod. Do not run four heavyweight reviews on a one-line change.15163. **Dispatch the convened lenses in parallel.** For each convened lens, dispatch a subagent with that role's prompt from `references/roles/` (product-manager.md, tech-lead.md, fde.md, domain-business.md) and the target. Run them independently so no lens anchors another.17184. **Synthesize.** Merge the findings: deduplicate overlaps, surface disagreements between lenses as explicit tensions (do not average them away), and order by severity (blocker, then important, then minor).19205. **Turn findings into proposed actions.** For any finding that implies doing something, emit an ActionRequest following `references/action-seam.md` (the reference implementation is `seam/action_seam.py`): set the action, target, rationale, reversible, stakes, and action_class (deterministic or real_world). The pod proposes; it does not execute. Deterministic actions are carried out later by the agent's own tools (Bash, Edit), gated by the permission prompt; real_world actions need an external action runtime (for example Computer Use or a browser MCP) and are surfaced for the human, not run here. Gate everything real-world, irreversible, or above low stakes for human approval, and record every proposed action in the audit.21226. **Write the Pod Review.** Fill `references/pod-review-template.md`, save it as `pod-review.md` in the working project, and show it to the user. The verdict (ready, ready with fixes, or not ready) names the single highest-leverage fix. The proposed-action queue lists each action with its stakes, class, handler, approval status, and result.2324## Self-check before you finish2526Check the Pod Review against this rubric, and fix anything that fails:2728- Every convened lens produced findings.29- Disagreements are surfaced as tensions, not hidden or averaged.30- The verdict names one highest-leverage fix.31- Every proposed action carries stakes, reversibility, class, and approval status.32- Every high-stakes, irreversible, outbound, or real-world action is gated for human approval.33- The review is advisory: no action was taken on the pod's own authority.3435## Scope to the stakes3637Full pod at high-stakes gates (a Discover decision, a spec, a release, an eval verdict). A subset or a single lens for a small, reversible change. The failure mode to avoid is approval-of-everything, which turns the pod itself into the constraint.3839See `references/examples/jobmate-distractor-filter.md` for a worked run across all six phases, including where an external action runtime is needed.
anandamritraj