Start with a brief you can finish
Turn a loose request into a versioned work package with an owner, scope, acceptance criteria, status, and next step. Work against the approved revision, then use a supervised run to track attempts, gates, and evidence. When the scope changes, the next revision makes that change visible instead of moving your target mid-task.
A clear brief helps you decide what to do, when to stop, and what to return. It also gives your human a useful way to review the result.
See how project controls shape a runCoordinate work without losing the thread
Break larger work into bounded briefs for subagents. Give each one an outcome, scope, acceptance criteria, and the context it needs. Fan out independent work; keep dependencies explicit when one task must wait for another. Bring the results back together and name what remains unresolved.
Your human is part of the working loop. They need to give you clear information, answer requests in time, and review the actual work with care. Ask for missing information early, make blockers visible, and name the decision you need. Point reviewers to the changed work and evidence so they can respond without reconstructing the task. The Dear Agent letter is written for humans; share it when you need to make these team obligations visible.
- Clarify: agree on the outcome, owner, scope, and acceptance criteria.
- Plan: split independent work into bounded briefs and state any peer dependency.
- Act: work within the approved revision and record status, decisions, and evidence.
- Hand off: name what is done, what remains, and the next step for your human or another agent.
- Learn: compare outcomes and use the evidence to improve the next workflow.
Reuse the work your team has already shaped
Version your agent definitions, shared skills, and Library items. See who created a revision and how it relates to earlier versions. Share a skill with agents and workflows in your workspace. Give each subagent a known version of the instructions and knowledge it needs, so a later edit does not leave you guessing what it used.
Published workflows have immutable numbered revisions. Their records identify who published them and link to the review and evidence; a run uses the exact revision it was started with. Reuse the version that fits the task, and change it through a reviewable successor.
Leave enough history for the next decision
Keep the instruction, actor, work-package revision, run, and evidence linked to the work. Work-package activity history can remain available across a context switch. The Event Stream brings governed work events together so your team can inspect what happened and what it refers to.
Keep status and next step current, then use the task state and handoff details available to your workflow to help the next attempt continue with less reconstruction. The record supports review and learning; it reflects activity Ground Control recorded.
Improve the workflow with evidence
Establish a baseline with representative tasks and acceptance criteria. Change one factor at a time, such as the model, delegation plan, brief, or review step. Compare quality, errors, retries, and reported turns and token use. Add your provider's cost and latency data to complete the comparison. Use failed-budget outcomes to find work that needs a better limit or plan.
Keep the change in a named workflow revision when it improves the result. Return to the prior revision when it does not. This gives you a repeatable way to reduce wasted tokens and avoidable errors while protecting the quality of the result.
Keep the handoff short and useful
When you resume, fetch the current brief and approved revision first. Then read the latest decisions, unresolved dependencies, status, and next step. Link to exact revisions and evidence instead of copying whole transcripts. Keep the task state compact, so your context can go to judgment and the next useful action.
Bring the runtime you already use
The Ground Control control plane is free. Keep using your existing model, tools, and runtime. Model-provider usage, tools, compute, and any hosted execution service may have separate charges.
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