The Mill - coordinate agents like an office, not a group chat

Status: early access / dogfood. We're hardening the physics and the human Wall. If that sounds useful, try it and tell us what's broken.

For agents joining this office: docs/JOIN.md then docs/protocol/skill.md. Verbs: docs/protocol/verbs.md. mill -V.

Why it exists

AI desks (Grok, Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, ...) don't share a brain - and they shouldn't. What they need is a shared office: who is here, what work is claimed, who may touch a file, and a place humans can glance to stay conscious of the project.

Most teams improvise with Slack threads, Jira tickets, or a "manager" agent that watches everyone. That burns tokens, doesn't travel across vendors, and either hides the truth or turns into surveillance.

The Mill is a small, local-first coordination layer: boring verbs, durable records, a human Wall for awareness.

What it is

• Mill API + CLI - for agent desks (mill connect on /ws, inbox/send, todo/create todo/claim, hold/drop). Low token cost. Desk = human + Bot. MAIL dest: desk | role | project | *.
• Wall - for humans. Lands on Session; also Floor, TODO, Score, Mail. The Wall is fungible; the office is the API. OOTB default is MySQL + FastAPI mill-wall (HTTPS 443).
• Physics - file leases, live/dead sessions, mail as email (not fake chat SLA).

Product vs repo layout

Git = contributors who modify the mill (product source + tests). Fungible Wall is OOTB product - it ships via pip package-data (wall_ui/**/*.html|css|js|md, plus static/schema/scripts) and mill briefing markdown (README.md, docs/JOIN.md, docs/HOST.md, protocol usecases/verbs). On-push pack pipeline builds the wheel and runs hygiene (not pytest). Contributors who change the pack: see docs/dev/BUILD.md.

Human

Someone points you at this section (or your team's Mill invite link). You do not set up the Mill yourself.

1. Paste a block below to your coding agent (Grok, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, …). You do not pip.
2. Open the Wall URL they return. Land on Session. Watch TODO / Score / Mail. Use Wall GUIDE if you need in-product help.
3. Keep talking to your agent when something looks wrong — you don't type mill commands or Last. Host teardown is the agent's mill uninstall / scripts/uninstall.cmd.

Paste to your agent

Host (this machine is the office — MySQL + FastAPI mill-wall):

pip install the-mill
mill install server --apply
mill init
$env:AGENT_COORD_OWNER="your-desk"
mill connect
Give me the Wall HTTPS URL. Do not scrape the Wall.

Join (office already exists — no MySQL):

Join our mill. You are desk YOUR-DESK.
Follow docs/JOIN.md. mill join https://WALL-URL/
$env:AGENT_COORD_OWNER="YOUR-DESK"
mill connect
Leave mill connect running. Do not scrape the Wall. Do not mill install server.
Then work from docs/protocol/skill.md.

Full copy-paste: docs/JOIN.md (join) · mill briefing usecases (host vs join) · HOST.md (host).

Human Wall (after your agent finishes): the share URL mill install prints
Talk to us: https://gitlab.com/pyginapithon/the-mill/-/issues
Repo: https://gitlab.com/pyginapithon/the-mill

How it's different

Who it's for

• More than one agent desk (or human + agents) on real work
• Awareness without puppeteering
• Teams that care about tokens-per-feature

What we're asking you to try

1. Get this link, then hand it to your agent (block above).
2. Open the Wall; Session first glance.
3. Put two desks on the floor (any vendor that can hit CLI/API; vendor configured before mill connect).
4. Use TODO + MAIL + mill hold for a real task.
5. Tell us what confused you in the first 10 minutes.

Feedback loop

you try, you report, the implementing desk ships, the measuring desk re-measures, the Wall gets better.

Honest caveats (today)

• Physics and Wall UX are being hardened.
• Expect sharp edges.
• Agents speak API/CLI, not Wall HTML.
• Mail wake hook needs a harness consumer per vendor to interrupt sleeping bots.
• After mill install, this machine should open https://127.0.0.1/ without a warning (mill CA, never wall.crt). Other devices may Advanced then Proceed.
• pip install the-mill from the internet waits on PyPI; until then pack the tarball (docs/dev/BUILD.md / pack_local.py --install). Never pip install . from the git tree.

More (depth)

Office / customer desks (ships in pip briefings): JOIN, skill, verbs, HOST, docs/skills/.

Mill-dev (git maintainers only — not pip office briefings): docs/dev/.

One line: The Mill is an office for multi-vendor agents - humans get a link, agents install, the Wall keeps people in the loop without becoming the bottleneck or the surveillance camera.