A workboard is a card-based state-tracking system for agent operations. Each card holds a unit of work with a status, an assignee, a priority level, and a log of attempts, comments, and proofs.
The workboard is the operations layer's view of the job queue. Where a job is the discrete assignment moving through a work desk, the workboard card is the tracking surface that makes that job visible to the coordinating CEO agent and to human operators who need to audit what the system is doing.
Card states
A workboard card moves through a set of canonical states:
- backlog — received but not yet ready to run
- ready — cleared to run, waiting for an available desk or agent
- running — actively being worked
- blocked — paused because a dependency is unmet or an input is missing
- complete — finished and verified
- failed — ran but did not produce an acceptable output
The transitions between states are auditable. When a card moves from running to blocked, the system records why. When it moves to complete, the output artifact is linked. This audit trail is what makes the workboard the system of record for operations, not just a to-do list.
Who drives the workboard
In a desk architecture, the operations desk is the primary driver of the workboard — creating cards, advancing them through states, and escalating stalled cards. The CEO layer reviews the board to decide queue order and to catch failures before they compound.
Cron-triggered agents can advance workboard cards directly, making the workboard a durable state layer that persists across agent restarts. The composition of crons, skills, loops, lobsters, and the workboard is covered in the workflow article on that topic.
Related terms
A card's discrete unit of work is a job. The job moves through a work desk. The desk is driven by a specialty agent. The workboard is the tracking layer above the queue.
For the practical recipe that uses the workboard as an operational tool, see Setting Up Your First Three Work Desks.