answer questions in a note an agent carries out your answer

Agents often stop at a decision only you can make. Here the question goes in a note with a card on the board. You answer in the note when you have a minute and move the card to Answered. The next run starts an agent that reads your answers and carries them out, and the card moves to Done.

what you need #

• The board and connector from hand board cards to agents, with one more list, Answered.
• A question note linked from each card: - [ ] Pick a cache for sessions [[Session cache]].
• The vault on desk, the head. The job pins its tasks there, since no other machine has the notes.

the job #

A second job on the same board. It reads Answered and takes every card there: tag = "" turns the tag filter off. Leave tag out and the connector falls back to #agent, and your answered cards never go out.

# ~/.config/pastor/jobs/answered.toml
description = "Carry out the answers on the app board"
every = "1m"

[connector]
use = "obsidian-kanban"
board = "~/notes/Boards/App.md"
list = "Answered"
tag = ""

[dispatch]
machine = "desk"
max_tasks_per_run = 3
timeout = "45m"
prompt = """
You are pastor task {{ task.id }}. The card "{{ item.title }}" was moved to
Answered: its questions have answers now. Nobody is watching; do not ask
questions.

The note:

{{ item.body }}

Act on every answer. Carry a decision into the notes it touches, and add a
card tagged #agent to Ready for work an agent can do alone. If an answer
raises a new question, add it to the same note with options and a
recommendation, and put a new card for it in To decide. Under each answer,
say what you did with it. The notes are in ~/notes. Do not move this card.
"""

The job has no repo: the agent starts in ~/pastor-tasks on desk and reaches the notes by path. The connector’s hook moves the card to In Progress while the task runs. With no repo there is no branch to review, so the hook moves it on to Done when the task finishes, or to Failed if it fails.

The key is still a hash of the card’s text. A second round on the same note needs new card text, such as Pick a cache for sessions, round 2 [[Session cache]].

what you see #

Move a card to Answered and check before the minute is up:

$ pastor tick --dry-run --job answered
$ pastor task list --job answered

JOB       OUTCOME  ITEMS  CREATED           SEEN  DEFERRED  ERROR
answered  dry_run  1      35c10ffc1bae3a76  0     0

ID    STATE    PRIORITY  MACHINE  FLOCK    AGENT   MODEL  JOB       AGE  NOTE
t-17  running  normal    desk     default  claude  -      answered  20s  Pick a cache for sessions [[Session cache]]

When it ends, the card reads Pick a cache for sessions [[Session cache]] (t-17 finished, no repo to review, outcome: done) in Done, and the note has a line under each answer.

next #

• hand board cards to agents: the first job on this board
• jobs and tasks
• job files