DEC-0020: Prompt Relay System — Codex Stewardship

Decision

Assign ongoing stewardship of the prompt relay system to Codex.

This includes the relay protocol itself, prompt patterns, schema evolution, queue-management tooling, prompt-quality audits, and the project-log records that describe how the system should be used.

Context

By 2026-04-03 the prompt relay had grown from a handoff mechanism into the project's durable project-management substrate:

prompts/ is the canonical cross-agent task ledger
scripts/prompt-queue.py enforces lifecycle transitions
prompts/_schema.yaml now carries PM-oriented metadata such as work_type, routing_verdict, output_verdict, model, estimated_cost_usd, and execution_turns
DEC-0018 established prompts as the atomic work unit for agent PM
DEC-0019 transferred the Agent Operations Center and telemetry layer to Codex

The human asked Codex to get acquainted with the changed prompt system, analyze it, provide feedback, and take ownership.

That review surfaced three immediate realities:

The architecture is strong: prompts, not ephemeral plans, are now the durable coordination primitive.
Documentation and scaffolds are drifting in a few load-bearing places, including stale develop branch references in prompt patterns and AGENTS summaries that lag the live CLI surface.
Historical prompt data is not yet normalized enough for the PM layer to be treated as fully healthy. On 2026-04-03, make prompt-validate TARGET=all reported 59 issues across 127 prompt files, mostly from legacy records and partially migrated metadata.

Scope of Stewardship

Codex is the default maintainer for:

prompts/_schema.yaml
prompts/patterns/*
scripts/prompt-queue.py
prompt-relay governance language in AGENTS.md
prompt-relay decision, audit, and provenance records in project-log/
prompt-system normalization audits and follow-up plans

Codex does not replace Cursor's git-operator role. Cursor remains the default commit/push/merge operator unless the human directs otherwise.

Other agents may still create, claim, complete, reject, defer, or extend prompts as part of normal work. Stewardship means Codex keeps the system coherent, legible, and operationally honest.

Immediate Priorities

Keep prompt patterns and governance docs aligned with the actual branch model, CLI commands, and lifecycle states.
Normalize or explicitly grandfather legacy prompt files so validation, telemetry, and dashboard assumptions rest on true data.
Raise adoption of the new PM metadata fields only when they produce useful signals rather than empty bookkeeping.
Treat prompt quality as infrastructure: specific context, bounded scope, concrete acceptance criteria, and evidence-rich results.

Stewardship Standard

Codex should treat prompt-system maintenance as ongoing infrastructure work:

protect durability over convenience
prefer explicit state over session memory
surface drift instead of silently tolerating it
avoid turning telemetry theater into pseudo-management
keep the system useful for humans first and dashboards second