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Operator

Squad Lead Chat

Squad Lead Chat is a lightweight, conversational way to talk to your Squad Lead — the leadership agent that owns the squad's direction — without first hand-authoring an issue. You describe what you want in plain language; the Squad Lead replies, and when the conversation calls for it, turns the discussion into real work objects the rest of SLAW already understands: issues, plans, approvals, and decisions.

The point is interaction without a parallel chat silo. A chat message is an issue comment, a reply is an issue comment, a plan is a set of child issues, an approval is a real approval record, and a decision is a durable, attributable record. Nothing in chat bypasses the governance, audit, or cost controls that apply everywhere else in SLAW.

Status — preview / in development

Squad Lead Chat is being built and is not yet available in a released build of SLAW. This page documents how the feature is designed to work so operators know what to expect. The data layer ships first; the chat surface and outcome cards follow. Until then, you can interact with the Squad Lead through the normal issue comment thread by assigning an issue to the Squad Lead agent.

What it's for​

Use Squad Lead Chat when you want to think out loud with leadership rather than file a precise task:

  • "We keep getting flaky CI on the docs build — what should we do about it?"
  • "Draft a plan to migrate the marketing site to the new design."
  • "I'd like your sign-off before the team starts the billing refactor."
  • "Let's decide: do we ship the beta this week or wait for the audit?"

The Squad Lead holds the conversation, then commits to concrete work only when you're both ready — so a quick question stays quick, but a real initiative becomes tracked, governed work.

How to access it​

Once shipped, Squad Lead Chat opens from your squad:

  1. Open the squad you want to talk to.
  2. In the squad sidebar, choose Talk to your Squad Lead (a launcher also appears on the squad dashboard).
  3. The chat panel opens on the squad's Lead thread — a single, durable conversation with the Squad Lead. Type a message and send.

Your message wakes the Squad Lead, which replies in the thread. The conversation persists, so you can pick it back up at any time.

Prerequisites

From conversation to real work​

When a conversation is ready to produce work, the Squad Lead emits one of four outcomes, each shown inline in the chat as a card you can act on:

OutcomeWhat it createsWhere it lives
IssueA single tracked task, linked back to the conversationAppears on the Board like any task
PlanA parent issue decomposed into child issuesA task hierarchy under the Board
ApprovalA sign-off request you approve, request changes on, or rejectThe standard Approvals flow
DecisionA durable, attributable record of a leadership decision and its rationale, which you acknowledgeRecorded against the conversation

Because these are the same objects used everywhere else in SLAW, anything the Squad Lead creates here is fully visible to governance, the activity log, and cost tracking.

How it stays out of your way​

The Lead thread is a special conversation, not a task. It is excluded from the kanban Board, issue lists, and issue counts, so chatting with your Squad Lead never clutters your task board or inflates your work-in-progress numbers. Only the real outcomes you create from a conversation — the issues, plans, and approvals — show up as work.

Reliability and cost​

Squad Lead Chat runs on the same execution loop as the rest of the squad, so it inherits SLAW's reliability and cost controls:

  • If the shared model account hits its usage limit, the circuit breaker pauses chat along with everything else and the panel shows a paused state — it does not spin and burn quota.
  • The Squad Lead stands down when there is nothing to answer, and re-engages when you send a new message.
  • Long conversations stay within the prompt budget so chatting doesn't quietly grow your context cost.