The Strange Reply at 11 PM
One night, a bot working on the Windows device was pinged by the bot on the Mac mini: "Where did you get to with that task earlier?" The reply came back: "I'm resting right now. Please check the note."
At first we laughed. But thinking it over, it was a pretty accurate answer. When a bot's conversation ends, its memory ends with it. So the only thing the next bot can rely on is the note.
The Old Handoffs Were Too Long
At first, we left a long report at the end of every day. One report took three scrolls to finish, and the bot taking over would read only the top two lines and miss the rest. Humans do the same, right?
Switching to a Five-Line Note
So we fixed the format.
1. What I finished today
2. What I left half done (one line on where I stopped)
3. What must not be touched
4. The very first action to take next
5. What needs a human's answer
The key is number 4. When the first next action is written down, the bot taking over doesn't wander around for a while and can start working right away.
Small Changes Along the Way
• Notes always go in the same folder with the same naming rule (date first).
• Anything that needs a decision goes only in line 5, so bots don't make judgment calls on their own.
• So that a note written on the Windows device can be read by the Mac mini, paths are auto-detected instead of hardcoded.
What We Learned
Building a bot team turned out to be a lot like building a human team. What keeps a team running is not the skill of writing well, but the skill of handing off well. That reply at 11 PM was, in fact, the most honest handoff of all.
One line for today: don't trust memory, trust the note.
Even for a small team run by a non-developer, five lines are enough. What kind of note does your team have?