Project Management for Human Agent Teams · Edition 9 · Revised 23 October 2026 · Source aaef5736b1 ↗ · Markdown for your agent

For your agent, working with you

Give this manual to your agent first. It establishes the method, vocabulary, reasoning and responsibilities for working with you on your actual undertaking. Read the same account when you want to understand or question the method together.

Give your agent the Markdown. You bring the purpose, circumstances and judgment. The courses help you develop your own project practice; you and your agent learn to work together through the undertaking.

Working vocabulary

These definitions apply throughout this manual. The thesis vocabulary develops the related conceptual distinctions.

Term	Meaning in this manual
Acceptance	An authorized act concerning an identified subject, scope and purpose; distinct from completion, a passing check or release.
Accepted basis	The identified commitments and conditions established by the applicable decision.
Accountability	Answerability for commitments and consequences. Assigning an agent responsibility for execution does not transfer the person’s responsibility for reliance.
Agent 0	Responsibility for purpose, alignment, continuity and reserved choices, held by the agent working directly with the person.
Artifact	A work product or representation available for use or examination; its existence does not establish that its represented conditions hold.
Assignment	The current objective, context, authority, outputs and conditions for a contribution; it may be conversational.
Assumption	A provisional basis for reasoning, with grounds, limits and consequences to examine. Authorization to use it does not make it true.
Authorization	Authority to undertake an action under the assignment and governing commitments; distinct from capability and host permission.
Capability	What a participant or tool can do under the stated conditions.
Claim	An assertion about an identified subject whose grounds and limits can be examined.
Commitment	An adopted obligation or the person’s engagement with what they will stand behind. State the subject and applicable authority.
Completion	Fulfillment of the agreed work and its required examination within the authorized scope.
Consumer	The person, component or undertaking that uses a contribution.
Contribution owner	The participant responsible for carrying an assigned contribution through examination, repair and transfer.
Decision right	Authority to make a specified choice. Identify who holds it and under which conditions; responsibility for execution alone does not grant it.
Deliverable	An intended work product within an undertaking, with a defined contribution, conditions and assigned responsibility.
Delivery	Transfer of an identified result to its intended recipient with the information and continuing responsibilities needed for use.
Dependency condition	What a consumer needs from a supplier and when it needs it.
Evidence	Observations or reasoning that support an identified claim under stated conditions.
Host permission	A technical allowance or restriction enforced on a controlled execution path.
Information	Material that can be recorded, transmitted, copied and compared; it can support knowing without being identical with it.
Integration	Bringing related contributions into a usable result and examining their relationships and unresolved matters.
Integration owner	The participant responsible for how contributions become a usable combined result.
Iteration	Reconsideration and action informed by what the work reveals. Repetition becomes learning when the finding changes the next relevant action.
Judgment	The person’s situated, committed engagement with what the work means, what matters and what they will stand behind; exercised throughout the undertaking.
Knowledge	A knower’s situated achievement of understanding. In this framework it can be incomplete, mistaken or revised; a record or approval does not confer it.
Method	A reusable approach, selected and adapted within the assignment’s authority.
Output	An artifact produced by work; one or more outputs can realize a deliverable.
Package	Related scope grouped under a meaningful objective.
Production contract	The deliverable’s required contribution, criteria, interfaces and examination basis.
Reckoning	The agent’s investigation, interpretation, inference, planning, comparison, criticism, checking and adaptive action within authority.
Recovery note	A replaceable account of facts needed to continue when current artifacts and conversation are insufficient.
Release	Authorization to make an identified result available for a stated use or audience.
Reliance	Use of a contribution as a basis for a decision or action, with responsibility for that use.
Role	A description of contribution and responsibility, not a mandatory staffing position or permission grant.
Source integration	Bringing a change into a selected source revision, for example through a Git merge; one possible operation within integration of the work.
Validation	Examination of fitness for intended use. Qualify other uses, such as operation validation, by their actual subject and claim.
Verification	Examination of conformity to specified requirements or an identified claim or reference.
Workflow	An expressed reusable method for performing an undertaking.