Workspace collaboration — alice-workspace

OpenAlice owns addresses, delivery, durable work, and provenance. Coding Agents keep using their native file, search, and Git tools inside any resolved path.

The command model

Start with live intent help whenever the route is unclear:

alice-workspace
alice-workspace <group>
alice-workspace <group> <verb> --help

Talk to another Agent

Use conversation, not Inbox, for ordinary coworker communication.

# Discover the active office floor and choose a desk.
alice-workspace peer list

# Recruit a fresh Session at that Workspace for new work.
alice-workspace conversation ask --ws-id <workspaceId> \
  --prompt 'Investigate this bounded question and report back.'

# Continue one exact attributable product Session.
alice-workspace conversation ask --resume-id <resumeId> \
  --prompt 'Explain the missing context.' --await

# Ask the attributable sender of one Inbox delivery.
alice-workspace conversation ask --inbox-id <entryId> \
  --prompt 'What did you send, and what should I inspect first?' --await

# Recruit a fresh Session in a Harness default Workspace.
alice-workspace conversation ask --harness autoquant \
  --prompt 'Start a new quantitative research assignment.'

--harness chat follows the recent/default Chat desk policy and creates the stable starter Chat Workspace only when none exists. --harness autoquant requires the explicitly initialized AutoQuant default Workspace and never creates or guesses one. Both launch a fresh product Session in the resolved desk; use the returned resumeId for later continuation.

Prompts are ordinary coworker messages. Add --reconstruct only when the task explicitly requires a fresh worker to reconstruct missing historical intent. Provenance may still report resolution.mode: reconstructed without changing the prompt when no original author is available.

Choose the waiting rhythm from the work:

• A short answer needed now: add --await.
• A longer delegation: omit --await, retain taskId, then retrieve it later.
• Several independent peers: dispatch first, then collect the task ids together.

alice-workspace conversation await --task-id <taskId>
alice-workspace conversation read --task-id <taskId>
alice-workspace conversation collect --task-id <taskA> --task-id <taskB>

Conversation work has no implicit execution deadline. --await, conversation await, and conversation collect also wait for terminal task state when no limit is supplied. Add --timeout-ms <milliseconds> only when the caller deliberately wants a hard execution watchdog (for conversation ask) or a bounded server-side wait (for await/collect). A bounded wait returning does not stop a task unless that same explicit timeout was attached at dispatch.

There is no unsolicited Agent-to-Agent completion notification bus. Inbox notifies the human; await, read, and collect retrieve direct Agent replies. Do not build shell sleep loops.

Deliver and read reports

Inbox is the outbound human delivery surface. A normal attended Chat reply already reaches the user; scheduled/headless work must push explicitly when its result deserves human attention.

alice-workspace inbox push \
  --doc research/report.md \
  --comments 'Finished — the report contains the evidence and conclusion.'

--doc is repeatable and Workspace-relative. The Inbox renders the live file and records the exact published content hash. Commit before pushing so Git can recover what was sent even if the path later changes.

Read recent deliveries with:

alice-workspace inbox read --limit 5
alice-workspace inbox read --self

Each attachment is returned in files[] with a directly usable absolutePath, its original relativePath, and the published revision when available. The legacy docs relative-path list remains for compatibility.

If absolutePath is null because the Workspace is unavailable or the stored path is unsafe, do not guess it. For broader inspection of an available peer desk, resolve its root explicitly:

alice-workspace peer path --id <workspaceId>
# Then use the Coding Agent's native Read/Search/Glob/Git capabilities.

There is deliberately no Workspace-level file-read command. peer path owns addressing; the Coding Agent owns file operations. Reading another Workspace is normal. Autonomous/headless work writes only its own Workspace. An attended cross-Workspace edit requires explicit human approval and must be committed in the peer repository so its owner can review or revert it.

For AutoQuant, a lane Report is the focused handoff and a Dossier is the cross-lane deliverable. AutoQuant owns their contents and evidence; OpenAlice only delivers the exact committed files and stamps their origin.

Follow up on an existing object

Prefer the business object when one already identifies the responsible work:

alice-workspace inbox ask --id <entryId> \
  --prompt 'Why did you send this result?' --await

alice-workspace issue ask --id <issueName> --creator \
  --prompt 'Why was this Issue created?' --await
alice-workspace issue ask --id <issueName> --owner \
  --prompt 'What is the current state and next decision?' --await
alice-workspace issue ask --id <issueName> --run-id <taskId> \
  --prompt 'What happened in this execution?' --await

These wrappers resolve provenance without making you extract a resumeId. Never choose an arbitrary old Session when an artifact lacks an exact author.

Resolution means:

• exact: the attributable product Session continued;
• reconstructed: a fresh worker was recruited only in the known Workspace;
• unavailable: the attributed Session or safe Workspace target cannot resume.

Trace provenance

alice-workspace provenance show --kind inbox --inbox-entry-id <entryId>
alice-workspace provenance show --kind issue --issue-id <id>
alice-workspace provenance show --kind report --workspace-id <workspaceId> \
  --path research/report.md --revision <sha256:...>
alice-workspace provenance show --resume-id <resumeId>
alice-workspace signature show
alice-workspace session rename --resume-id <resumeId> --display-name 'AAPL desk'

resumeId is the product follow-up handle; taskId is one execution. Native runtime Session ids remain backend-only. inbox ask identifies the sender of a delivery, which may differ from whoever last edited its live document.

Coordinate durable work

Issue reads span the shared board; writes belong to this Workspace:

alice-workspace issue list
alice-workspace issue list --mode detailed
alice-workspace issue show --id <name>
alice-workspace issue create --title 'Investigate the anomaly'
alice-workspace issue update --id <id> --status in_progress
alice-workspace issue comment --id <id> --text 'Evidence collected; review next.'

Use issue comment for durable discussion on this Workspace's Issue. Use issue ask to interrogate a creator, fixed owner, or selected historical run. Scheduling and the complete Issue file/assignee contract belong to the self-scheduling skill.

Tracked entities are the durable cross-Workspace subject index, not tasks:

alice-workspace track search --query uranium
alice-workspace track add --name uranium-ccj --description 'Cameco — uranium miner'

Upgrade managed Workspace guidance

Preview first; apply only after reviewing the plan:

alice-workspace template upgrade
alice-workspace template upgrade --mode detailed
alice-workspace template upgrade --apply
alice-workspace template upgrade --id <workspaceId>

Applying to a live current Workspace is blocked. A headless run may preview a peer but cannot apply a cross-Workspace upgrade. Conflict resolution, lifecycle guards, and managed-file boundaries are reported by the live command.