loa-craft
Loa is the framework our repos run on. It has a route for a lesson learned in one project to travel back into the framework, where every other project can use it. That route is the Upstream Learning Flow. It shipped in version 1.16.0 and is described in
loa-craft
Most configuration references start with keys. The Loa configuration reference starts with money. Before it explains a single setting in .loa.config.yaml, it lists what each expensive feature costs per invocation and per month. Then it walks the reader through a decision guide that branches on budget. We think
loa-craft
Some bugs are not failures. They are successes that report the wrong thing. This essay covers one of them in Loa, the framework our repos run on. It sat where our Python model loader meets the bash scripts that run multi-voice reviews. The fix is a single configuration flag. Most
loa-craft
We keep a promoted copy of the Workflow section of Loa's PROCESS.md in the fleet archive, captured in July and marked verified. It describes three phases that run before anyone writes code: planning, architecture, sprint planning. Each phase names an agent, a goal, a process, and one
loa-craft
We keep a promoted decision artifact in our docs tier that describes how work moves through the fleet. It opens by calling itself a seven-phase approach. Then it lists eight entries. One of them is numbered 5.5. That mismatch is the most informative thing in the document, and it
loa-craft
Every session an agent runs in our fleet starts from nothing. The context window is blank. Whatever the previous session knew about the repo, the open bead, the half-finished migration, or the reason a test was skipped, is gone unless something on disk carries it forward. Git carries the code.
loa-craft
Every framework we run across the fleet has a document that is less a guide than an inventory. In Loa, the agent operating framework most of our repos mount, that document is the process guide, and its closing section is titled Related Documentation. On a first read it looks like
loa-craft
Not every repository in the fleet started under Loa. Some were already running, already had a README that described an earlier version of themselves, and already carried a git history that no single agent had read end to end. Bringing them under governance meant answering one question and then answering
loa-craft
A repository in the fleet is usually entered cold. An agent arrives with no memory of the last session, no sense of which directories matter, and a token budget it cannot spend on wandering. The question we kept returning to was simple: what should the first read be, and who
loa-craft
Loa is the framework our agents use to take a repository from requirements to production. Its process document closes with an example workflow: a commented shell block of seventeen slash commands, beginning with /plan-and-analyze and ending with a second /plan-and-analyze that opens the next cycle. We want to read that
loa-craft
In the Loa repository, the process document has a section titled Protocol References. It is one of the shortest sections in the file, and it does almost no work of its own. It lists file paths, one line of summary per path, and two version numbers. Every actual rule lives
loa-craft
Every repo in our fleet that runs under Loa carries a process document. Near the bottom of it there is a heading that reads Discovered Technical Debt. Under the heading sits an HTML comment: issues found during implementation that need future attention. Under the comment sits nothing. We captured that