Teams

Hand DotCraft a complex request and it puts a small team on it. A Team Leader breaks the request into a task board and dispatches the work in parallel to a fixed roster of specialists — Explorer, Builder, Reviewer, Operator — then pulls their results back into one finished answer. You give a single ask and get the completed mission, not a pile of subtasks to babysit.

Teams ships behind the built-in agent-teams plugin. After enabling it from the Plugins catalog, Desktop shows a Team sidebar entry; the Team panel is the primary entry point for creating Missions and inspecting the team board.

NOTE

Each teammate works in its own conversation, with its own context, tools, history, and audit trail — so you can open any teammate's thread and follow exactly what it did.

When to Use Teams

Scenario	Recommendation
One-shot self-contained delegation inside an existing chat	SubAgents
A user request that needs planning, parallel work, and a synthesized final reply	Teams
Recurring or scheduled work driven by a workspace task	Automations
Keeping one Thread moving toward a long-running objective	Goals

Teams is overkill when the work fits comfortably inside one Thread. It is the right call when work naturally splits across roles, has explicit dependencies, or benefits from a Leader-owned synthesis at the end.

Default Roster

The team roster is fixed:

Member	Role
Team Leader	Breaks down Missions, assigns work, coordinates the team, writes the user-facing final response.
Explorer	Researches, inspects, and maps unknowns.
Builder	Implements changes and produces artifacts.
Reviewer	Checks quality, risks, and correctness.
Operator	Handles app- and computer-oriented operational tasks.

The roster is fixed: you don't create or remove members. Each member already carries a focused role and tool set suited to its part of the work.

Mission Lifecycle

A Mission is the user-facing delivery unit. Each Mission owns a task board, mailbox events, and a final response.

Status	Meaning
planning	Mission created; the Leader is working out a plan.
active	The Leader has a plan and at least one task is dispatched.
awaitingLeaderReview	All tasks and reviews are complete; the Leader is writing the final answer.
done	The Leader has delivered the final answer.
cancelled	You cancelled the Mission; its unfinished tasks are cancelled too.

Only finished Missions (done or cancelled) can be archived. Archiving keeps the record — it doesn't delete the Mission or its teammate threads.

TIP

In Desktop, cancellation and archival are card actions: drag a Mission card to the discard pile and confirm. The discard pile is not a clickable button — the drag is the deliberate gesture.

Task Board

Each Mission has a shared board. Every task on it carries an assignee, a status, its dependencies, any blockers, and an output summary, so you can see at a glance who's doing what and what's holding things up.

Status	Meaning
pending	Created, waiting to be scheduled.
waitingDependencies	Blocked on an upstream task.
ready	Cleared to run, but its assignee isn't free yet.
running	Running in the assignee's thread.
blocked	The assignee hit a blocker that needs action elsewhere.
review	Work is done but hasn't passed review yet.
done	Accepted toward the Mission's final answer.
failed	Can't continue without the Leader stepping in.
cancelled	Cancelled with its Mission or by an explicit decision.

The Leader sets dependencies between tasks when it assigns them, and can hold downstream work until it has reviewed the upstream results first. Reviews are just tasks too — any member can be asked to review another's work.

Collaboration Loop

Teammates work together in three ways:

• Messages — lightweight notes between members or to the Leader, used to flag something or ask for input.
• Artifacts — explicit handoffs: a named result with its location and a short summary, so the next teammate knows what they're picking up.
• Progress updates — running status or a raised blocker, so the board stays current.

The Leader doesn't sit and poll. It dispatches work, then steps back; it's brought back in only when results land, a blocker appears, a teammate needs an answer, or the Mission is ready for its final review.

Desktop UI

The Team panel is a card-game collaboration board:

• Robot teammate cards, Mission cards, and Task cards with live status pulled from Teams state.
• A right-side detail rail for the selected teammate, mission, or task.
• A primary Mission Draft workflow on the board for creating new Missions.
• Thread links that open the real Mission teammate thread when context allows; Mission teammate threads also appear in the ordinary conversation list while the plugin is enabled.

Status pills surface scheduler-relevant states (waitingDependencies, blocked, review, awaitingLeaderReview, done) so a stalled Mission can be diagnosed from the board.

Configuration

Teams is gated by the built-in agent-teams plugin. Its Missions, tasks, and handoff files all live inside the workspace, so they travel with the project and stay available across entry points. Each Mission gives its teammates a shared scratchpad for durable handoff material.

Runtime settings live in the teams config section. See the Configuration Reference for available keys, and Unified Session Core for how Mission threads are stored.

Related docs

• SubAgents — single-level delegation when Teams is overkill.
• Automations & Goals — schedule-driven tasks and Thread-level objectives that pair with Teams Missions.
• Unified Session Core — Thread / Turn / Item model that underpins Mission teammate threads.