Delegation and supervision

Delegation and supervision are paired contracts. A Mate accepts or routes intent, creates a bounded Assignment and delivers it through one direct hierarchy edge. The child returns material progress, blockers, decisions and completion through that same edge.

Captain intent
  → First Mate
    → charter-matched Second Mate
      → bounded Crewmate
    ← evidence and decisions
  ← outcome and human choice

Each supervisor reconciles only direct reports. This avoids a root Agent polling every worker and prevents ancestors from reaching around the accountable parent. Targeted PostgreSQL notifications wake the right Mate; durable rows carry the meaning.

A ship brief owns a delivery artifact. A scout brief owns a causal or investigative report and an exact decision inventory. Handoffs preserve previous Assignment history rather than changing the owner in place.

Supervision combines durable state with narrow native runtime evidence. It remains silent while ordinary work progresses and intervenes when evidence shows a blocker, stale plan, lost runtime or authority boundary.