Design Hub · Agent Engine · a surface story

Pulse

Watch surface · locked mock, not built

Pulse is the read-only watch surface inside Agent Engine — the one window you leave open to see your agents work in motion. It renders a snapshot of live work and links out to where the truth lives; it never edits real state. Follow the path below: it starts at the landing and ends on your phone. Every step opens the working prototype.

Someone meets Pulse on its landing, then steps in. From there: two truth stores feed a snapshot; a hook keeps it fresh; a push sends a live copy to your phone. Editing Pulse changes nothing — the arrows only ever read.

Front door · 0 The landing How someone meets Pulse — "is the work still beating?" The public page that leads into the Agent Engine bundle (RoadWork · Pulse · ExMan). Landing ↗killer use case Truth · 1a RoadWork The truth for work — every idea → task and where it stands. Editable; the source of record. Screen ↗read-only view Truth · 1b Design Hub The truth for UI + requirements — what screens look like + what each does. Editable; wins on conflict. Screen ↗read-only view Step · 2 Generator + hook Reads the stores + each terminal's state file, merges single-writer fragments into one self-contained file. A hook re-writes it whenever work moves. The logic ↗data contract Step · 3 Local snapshot The at-your-desk view: heartbeat cards + the composed sections. Portable — copy it anywhere; it still renders the frozen state. Screen ↗heartbeatsempty · stale Step · 4 Push table "Push to AIU" writes structured data (not markup) to a real-time table via an MCP tool. A deterministic scrub runs. No deploy. Push flow ↗R-FIDELITY Step · 5 Live gated mirror The login-gated intranet page subscribes and re-renders live with the same template — looks identical to the local file. Screen ↗signed-out gate Step · 6 Your phone Away from your desk, you glance and see work update in real time — the one job nothing else does. No reload, no deploy. Screen ↗waiting-first Every arrow reads only — and every card is a doorway: an "act on this" handle into ExMan (terminal items) or RoadWork (work items). The single thing Pulse writes is a copy of the data to your own gated page — never a change to the work itself.

Each terminal is one card showing only system-verifiable facts: its task (from its lane), its last-write time, and the state word it wrote itself. No card ever claims what an agent is "thinking".

◆ Working wrote recently ✓ Done closed its lane ○ Idle waiting for work ⚑ Waiting on you wrote a decision marker ⚠ Stale no move, not done ⊘ No signal heartbeat stopped
Use caseWhat it doesOpen it
Watch at your deskPer-terminal heartbeat cards + the composed in-progress view, read-only.Desk view ↗
Read a terminal's trailClick a card: last writes, its raw state line, and the links to its truth.Click a card ↗
Click through to work truthA read-only view-through to the RoadWork lane — no edit controls anywhere.RoadWork view ↗
Click through to UI truthA read-only view-through to the Design Hub requirement.Design Hub view ↗
Push to AIUPublish a live data copy to the gated page — structured data, scrubbed, no deploy.Push flow ↗
Live mirror on AIUThe DB-backed, real-time intranet page, signed in — identical layout.Live view ↗
Signed-out gateThe login gate that keeps internal work private.Gate ↗
Watch from your phoneThe away-from-computer view, waiting-on-you first.Phone view ↗
Disconnected (stale)The honest "last known, not current" state when the watcher drops.Stale view ↗
Nothing running (empty)The honest empty fence — a flat line, not an error, with a next step.Empty view ↗

Activity flow — what happens each time the work moves.

Terminal writes state Hook fires Re-write local snapshot Heartbeat cards update
on "Push to AIU" → Scrub (deterministic) Write data · push table Gated page re-renders live Phone updates · no reload

Workflow — the human's path through the surface.

Open Pulse Scan heartbeats See one waiting / stuck?
yes →Read the card's trailClick through to RoadWork to act
leaving desk →Push to AIUWatch live from phone

The load-bearing invariant: nowhere in this whole path is there a control that changes real work state. Pulse reads the truth and publishes a copy of it. To change work you open RoadWork; to change a requirement you open Design Hub. That is what makes Pulse safe to throw away and re-generate in a second.

Every card is a doorway — the tether (FOUNDER, 2026-07-10): "you can't react just view, react in ExMan, then they need to be tied together. If I'm looking at something and can't intervene how does that help me?" So read-only never means dead-end: every card carries an "act on this" handle — into ExMan for a terminal item, RoadWork for a work item — keyed by a shared id. Watch-without-a-handle is a defect. Until ExMan ships, the handle links to the real acting surface that exists today — never a dead button. Read-only inside Pulse, always a doorway out to act.

The prototype have it

The working mock — clickable, every state, light + dark, 375 → 1440. This is the pixel authority.

Open mock.html ↗
The hub story have it

This page — the plain-English "what this is and why", with the path you can drill into.

You're reading it ↑
The build packet have it

The one page any builder — Opus, Sonnet, or a person — builds from with nothing else open.

Open the requirements ↗