Architecture

From objective to shipped output

Inside the Labs experiment, three cooperating layers — an orchestration fabric, a governance company layer, and an execution fleet — create predictable flow with accountable gates instead of ad-hoc prompt chains.

  • 3Cooperating runtime layers
  • 4Stages in the work lifecycle
  • 4Hard gates before publication
  • 1Fleet hiring authority for capacity changes

The stack

Three cooperating layers

Each layer owns a distinct responsibility; together they turn many model calls into one accountable fleet — within the experiment, not as Catalyst Group’s operating company.

Orchestration

Orchestration fabric (Orca)

Routes work into isolated execution contexts and dispatches parallel slices to the right model providers.

Governance

Agent company (Paperclip)

Owns role identity, issue assignment, blockers, budgets, approvals, and outcome disposition.

Communications

Comms fleet (peer + bot)

Carries routine handoffs and status exchange so teams coordinate without brittle point-to-point coupling.

Lifecycle

How a unit of work moves

Every deliverable travels the same four stages, and each stage leaves inspectable evidence.

  1. Set the objective and owner

    A scoped issue captures expected outcome, tier, and acceptance criteria before execution begins.

  2. Dispatch execution slices

    Orchestration fans out bounded tasks to specialist lanes while preserving clear ownership per slice.

  3. Run with durable evidence

    Agents execute and leave comments, documents, and work products that make every claim inspectable.

  4. Gate and publish

    Design, security, and release reviewers accept or reject before merge; publication follows accepted gates only.

Setup story

From single-agent drift to multi-agent clarity

What broke first

Single-session workflows mixed drafting, judgement, and review. Quality looked plausible but failed under verification. There was no first-class owner for final acceptance, so defects leaked through despite good intent.

What changed

Role separation became explicit: delivery ownership, acceptance ownership, and policy gates are now distinct actors. Tiered delegation lowered cost while increasing quality by reserving expensive reasoning for irreversible decisions.