Artifacts
Tasks, notes, decisions and release notes, in one place that works the moment you open it. Every entry is a real record with a full document inside it, pointed at whatever it is about, so the reasoning stops living in a file nobody can find.
Artifacts, close up
Comes from
Runs through
Shows up as
What is travelling those lines
This is the same map as the one on the front of Solutions, zoomed into one surface. Work arrives from wherever it was thought up, and the parts that need a person queue up and wait as long as you take.
What it does
A starting set arrives with every brand. Add your own with its own name, icon and colour, so the workspace grows into how you already work instead of you renaming your work to fit it. Two brands can each have a kind called the same thing and choose different icons.
Try to remove one that entries are still filed under and you are told how many, then offered the safe move: switch it off so it leaves the pickers while the entries keep their name and icon.
The same statuses cover writing, media and product records, so a status means the same thing wherever you meet it. They are grouped so the product can tell lateness from history: a past date on a finished entry is history, and a parked entry is deliberately shelved and never nags.
Headings, lists, checklists, tables, quotes, code, images and diagrams, plus live references to other records and to people. Type a reference and it becomes a real link when you save. Type a person and they get a notice.
Point an entry at anything else in the workspace. Every link is verified before a single row is written, so a link to something that does not exist, or that belongs to another brand, rejects the save and names the pair rather than leaving half a save behind.
Open a record and see everything pointing at it. That answers the question a link normally cannot: not what does this point at, but who is talking about this.
Columns by status with drag to move, or rows sorted on the server by whichever column you click. One filter bar over both, and what you set rides in the address so a filtered view is a link you can send.
The editor stays open for a long time while other people, other tabs and agents write the same row. A save carries the version it started from, and one that would land on top of someone else's work stops and shows you what changed, field by field, instead of quietly winning.
One entry, part by part
The difference between a tracker you tolerate and one you trust is whether an entry can be asked anything. Here is what one of these actually holds, and what each part earns you.
The guard you only notice once
Most tools let you attach anything to anything and find out later that half of it points nowhere. Every link here is verified first, and a bad one stops the whole save rather than leaving part of it behind.
Every link is verified first. If one is bad the whole save is refused and the pair is named, so you never end up with an entry that half-saved and half-pointed nowhere.
A link to something belonging to another brand is rejected on the server. Brand separation is not a filter on a screen here, it is a rule the write path enforces.
Open any record and see everything pointing at it. That answers the question a plain link cannot: not what does this point at, but who is talking about this.
A reference typed into a document body becomes a real link on save, checked exactly like one made from the picker. There is no second, weaker path.
Where this sits
Artifacts is rarely where work starts. It is where work that started somewhere else becomes something a person can pick up, and each of those places has a page you can read.
Any record on the tree carries its own tasks and notes at any depth. Looking the other way, a record shows the statuses of the entries attached to it, so you can see which parts have work on them and how far that work has got.
Read ProductWhere a lot of this is thought up. A sticky becomes a real entry and keeps the link back to the board, so a session ends with work rather than a photograph.
Read WhiteboardsA draft carries its brief, its notes and its open questions as attached entries, on the record itself.
Read ContentAgents list, read, create and update entries and wire the attachments in the same call, under your permissions and your brand limits.
Read Your agentYours to keep
Every one of these we would choose again.
Kinds, statuses, stages and tags are yours to define. Nothing here asks you to describe your work in somebody else's nouns.
Your agent can work these records all day. There is no delete for it to call, so what disappears is what you chose to remove.
A shelved entry is marked shelved and stops nagging. It is not quietly marked done, and it is not left to rot in a list you have learned to ignore.
What you filtered rides in the address. You can send someone exactly what you are looking at without asking them to rebuild it.
Two people in the same entry get told, with the differences laid out, rather than the last save winning in silence.
The document body is part of the entry, not an attachment beside it. What you decided and why stays with the thing you decided it about.
Questions
Keep reading
The tree these entries usually hang off.
Where a lot of this work gets thought up.
The other place a document body earns its keep.
What an agent is allowed to do with all of it.
Open the workspace, do one real piece of work in it, and the joins will show you the rest.