Folders and branches
An agent always works in some folder on your machine. A card picks one folder with its «Folder» field.
The folder on the card
A folder is chosen on the card itself: click the value of the «Folder» field. The list has this board’s folders, “Add a folder…” under them and, when a folder is already chosen, “No folder”.
“Add a folder…” opens a folder picker. The folder you pick is added to the
board under its own name and put on the card at once. From then on it is in the
list on every card of the board — there is no need to add it again. If the
folder is already added on another board, the app does not add it twice but
makes it shared. If the name is already taken by another folder, a number is
added to it: app 2.
On a board that has no «Folder» field yet, the card still has a «Folder» row reading “Not chosen”; the first folder added makes the field.
The full list of folders and renaming them are in the board’s menu → “Folders…”.
When the board has only one folder, a new card is given it straight away: there is nothing to choose between, and the field is filled in where you can see it. A board with several folders leaves the field empty — that choice is yours.
A card shows its folder on its face on the board, as a line with a folder icon under the title. An empty field draws no line. «The board’s drafts» never appears there: that is where a card that has not named a folder is worked, not an answer the card gives.
The folder cannot be changed once work has started. As soon as an agent has started on the card, the field stops being editable and says which folder the card works in. Changing folders means making a new card: the work stayed where it began, and moving the field would not move it there.
Without a folder the agent still runs — in the board’s drafts, in a directory of the card’s own. The directory stays after the run: what the agent wrote is there. It has no code and no branch, so for a card that needs code, pick a folder. If the field names a folder that has since been taken off the list, the agent does not start and the card says why: pick another folder or “No folder”.
“Folders…” is in the menu of every board agents work on.
Every folder in the list is a card of its own: the name, the path under it, and — for a repository — its two settings.
A folder is one of two kinds:
- an ordinary folder — notes, texts, lists. The agent works in it as it stands, one card at a time; in the list it carries nothing but its name;
- a repository — a directory under git, marked “repository”. Here the agent works in a copy of the repository of its own, on the card’s branch: several cards run at once, and your own working copy is left alone.
The kind is not recorded once and for all: the app asks git every time it lists
them. Run git init in a folder you added a month ago and it is a repository —
nothing to reconfigure.
A folder is added with one button, Add a folder…, and repositories stand in the same list as plain folders — including where «Talk it over with an agent» asks “Which folder will the agent read?”.
The card’s branch
One card, one branch — however many times an agent runs on it. The branch starts from the repository’s main branch, and the copy is kept in the app’s data. When the work is finished and everything is committed, the copy is removed and the branch stays: the next run on this card restores the copy from it. A copy with uncommitted changes is never touched.
Where the agent works
An agent works on the card’s own branch. A conversation with no card («Talk it over with an agent») stands in the folder too and changes nothing in it.