Boards & stages
A board is a workspace containing stages and cards. It is the accountability surface: it shows at a glance what's on you, what's on an agent, and what's blocked.
Stages
A stage is a column of work with two orthogonal properties:
- an owner —
humanorai— which decides who holds a card while it sits there, and - a category, so its meaning on the board is unambiguous:
| Category | A card sitting here is… |
|---|---|
unstarted |
not begun — an idea, a backlog item, something queued up next |
planning |
being specified or designed, not yet being built |
in_progress |
actively being worked |
complete |
finished — shipped, or archived |
A stage can also carry a WIP limit and act as an approval gate.
Tip
Ownership is a property of the stage, not the card. A card's holder always follows its stage, so moving a card across a human↔AI boundary is the hand-off.
Human vs. AI stages
- Human stages are lanes where people work or decide. AI owners are "paused" here.
- AI stages are lanes where the Relay AI agent works — or is queued to. While it works, the card streams live progress; when it needs a call it can't make, it blocks and asks.
Review and Done
Many workflows add a *:Review sub-lane — a human checkpoint where the agent stops and waits
for approval — before a *:Done sub-lane that auto-continues into the next AI stage. The
board's sub-lane layout is the human-checkpoint configuration.