Work with Agents

An agent can do your work in NUU Operations. It reads and changes the same records that you see, with the same rules. Every change of an agent is your change: the activity log names you, with a small "via agent" label.

There are two ways in. An agent in a terminal uses the ops command line tool. An agent in NUU Chat or in an Orb uses the Ops tools of the NUU connector.

The ops command line tool

ops is a command line tool for agents. It signs in with your NUU account. It works in one organisation at a time: --org <org> names it, and me is your personal workspace.

These commands do most of the work:

ops headers                                   # every place of the organisation, with its address
ops search "login"                            # tasks and places that match a text
ops route "Fix the login bug on Safari"       # where a new task belongs, with a score and a reason
ops task create "Fix the login bug on Safari" --route
ops task create "Write the tests" --parent <task>
ops task move <task> --to section:"Website › Spring launch › Backend"
ops task map <task>                           # the home, the subtasks, the groups, and the lineage
ops deployment inbox Production --open        # what came up while a deployment runs
ops deliverable done "Website › Spring launch"

Each command prints the address of each record that it shows or makes. An agent names a record by its address in the next command. A record can also be named by its id, its web link, its title, or its path (Website › Spring launch › Backend). When a title matches two records, the command stops and lists both. The agent then picks one by its address. It does not guess.

ops <command> --help shows the options of each command. --json gives one JSON document for a program to read. The README of the tool (apps/cli-ops/README.md) has the full reference.

Agents in NUU Chat and Orbs

An agent in NUU Chat or in an Orb uses the Ops tools of the NUU connector. The main tools are:

• get_headers: the map of an organisation, with the address of each place.
• route_text: the best places for a sentence, with a score and a reason.
• create_task: a task in a place, or in the best place for its text. The agent tells you where the task went. When the place is a guess, the agent says so and offers a move.
• move_task: a task, with its subtasks, to another place.
• search, get_place, and get_task_map: find a task or a place, read what is in a place, and read the map of a task.
• create_section: a section in a project, a deliverable, a deployment, or the organisation.

These tools use the same route decision as quick create in Ops and as NUU Command.

What an agent must ask you first

An agent asks you before it does these things:

• It deletes a project, a deliverable, a section, a deployment, or a plan. These deletes remove what is inside them.
• It deletes a task that has subtasks.
• It marks a deliverable done. That is your decision.
• It undoes a change. It reads the history first, and it undoes only the change that it expects.

Agents in a Flint

A Flint has the Operations shard. The shard teaches an agent the model of Ops, the ops tool, and short recipes: create a task in the right place, move tasks, triage the inbox of a deployment, plan a deliverable with sections, and read a task map. Load it with flint shard start ops.