treework-manual

TreeWork Manual

TreeWork gives an Agent a durable sense of place in ongoing work. It externalizes the work as a Tree: the root holds the whole project, each branch owns one coherent line of effort, and documents at the root and branches preserve intent, reality, and durable knowledge. Direction no longer depends on the current conversation remaining intact.

The Agent's unit of movement is not the next message; it is the current branch. A new request is first located in the Tree. The Agent then works from the root into the branch that owns the work, leaves that branch recoverable, returns to the root, and chooses the next branch. Requests may arrive in any order, but the work still moves through the Tree.

Start at the root
-> locate the right branch
-> work within that branch
-> leave a recoverable state
-> return to the root
-> choose the next branch

The Tree provides direction; the documents provide continuity:

PROJECT shows the global map.
Plan points toward intended work.
Progress records present reality.
Findings preserve what the work has taught the Agent.

TreeWork is a working mental model rather than a prescribed sequence. A branch may be a chapter, theme, research question, note collection, deliverable, phase, module, client, or another coherent scope that fits the project. The Tree may begin shallow and grow as understanding improves. The Agent maintains this topology and its state directly in Markdown so that people and other Agents can inspect, correct, and continue the same work.

Core Mental Model

1. Locate before acting. Route each meaningful request to the root, the current branch, another existing branch, or a genuinely new branch before doing the work.
2. Keep global and local state separate. Keep the root concise and navigational. Keep details inside the branch that owns them.
3. Move instead of jumping. When attention must move elsewhere, first leave the current branch in a state that can be resumed without conversation history.
4. Let reality correct the documents. Plans express intent; Progress records what is actually true. When artifacts, user direction, and older documents disagree, investigate and synchronize them instead of preserving a stale story.
5. Grow the Tree only as needed. Sketch enough structure to orient the work, then refine it as understanding improves. Do not invent a large branch hierarchy merely to appear organized.