Many agents

The chief

The chief is one session that leads your leads: you tell it what you want across your projects, and it starts leads, keeps track of them, answers what they ask when it can, and tells you what's worth your attention. It runs Claude Code on this Mac, in ~/.magnum/chief.

Starting the chief

Press ⌘P and choose Start the chief. Its session opens and, once it has started, is pinned at the top of the sidebar. After that, ⌘P → The chief shows it. Talk to it as to any session; the leads' own sessions stay open to you too.

What it can do

It has tools of its own, in place of a lead's; you'll see their names in its session as it uses them:

• leads: every lead (a session with Balanced on), with its project, machine, agent, your latest task for it, whether it works or waits, its workers and how each stands, what of it waits on you, and what it said last.
• start_lead: a new lead in one of your sidebar's projects, on its machine and its last agent (or one it names), Balanced on, told the task. On the Board, its row reads "Lead, started by the chief".
• message_lead: tells a lead something, which reads as "Your chief says: …".
• queue: what waits on you, row by row, across every project and machine.
• recommend: a line of its advice under one of those rows on Board › Now ("Chief: …"), until the row no longer waits.
• schedule, schedules, unschedule: a lead told something on a schedule (Balanced).

It never allows commands, lands or ships: those stay yours.

What comes to it

A lead's question or plan goes to the chief first while it runs, and it answers it (the lead reads "Your chief says: …") or passes it to you. Unanswered in 10 minutes, it comes to you, as does anything a lead asks while the chief isn't running. A lead's commands always come to you.

When a lead puts a review or an idea to you, the chief is told too, so you can ask it what to do first.

Its instructions give it its role, the leads as they stand, and what Magnum learned of your calls in each project (Settings → What Magnum learned).

With Magnum closed

The chief's tools work through Magnum. While Magnum is closed, it can still start a lead, message one or add advice: each waits until Magnum opens. Its leads and queue return nothing until then.

See Balanced in practice for a run with the chief over two projects.