Rule
The unit of WIP is the Workroom, not the Build Studio build. Claim one before you work, on every surface, including the external CLIs.
Founder-directed 2026-06-26.
Why the unit is the Workroom and not the build
A build is one surface’s execution of work. The Workroom is the durable claim: it names the backlog item, holds the lease, records the branch and worktree, and carries the evidence a gate later reads. Anchoring WIP to a build would make work invisible whenever it ran anywhere else — which is most of it, since the four surfaces are peers and no surface is mandatory.
The name
Renamed from WorkCapsule to Workroom, founder-directed 2026-08-15: the
canonical name for what we claim and how we work. This was a convergence, not a
relabel — a WorkRoom view layer over WorkCase already existed, and the record
and the room are one concept rather than two. Governed by EP-WORK-CONVERGENCE
(umbrella BI-D2D190BF).
A branch has exactly ONE durable workroom identity, and it is keyed on
(repositoryFullName, headBranch). That is why create_workroom and
plan_workroom_worktree always stamp a repository — a workroom born without one
cannot be matched by that key, so the next claim_backlog_item_for_work on the
same branch forks a SECOND live capsule instead of late-binding, leaving the
objective and scope claims on one row and the backlog item on the other, with
both calls reporting success (BI-F83CF689). Adopting a branch that already
carries a live repo-less workroom binds the repository to it; a live workroom
bound to a different backlog item refuses with branch_occupied rather than
forking. If you ever see two non-archived workrooms on one branch, that is the
defect, not a supported shape.
⟦runtime: the MCP tools are now named create_workroom, claim_workroom_scope,
heartbeat_workroom and so on; the legacy *_capsule_* names remain callable but
unadvertised for the alias window. The Prisma field vocabulary (workCapsuleId,
capsuleId, the WC-* keys) is still unchanged on disk under @@map. Prefer the
Workroom vocabulary everywhere; expect the old names only at the column boundary
and from clients that have not migrated.⟧
What this rule does not yet enforce
Claiming is doctrine, not enforcement. Measured 2026-08-15: of 62 pushed remote
branches that never became a PR, only 3 carried a claim, and 146 of 148 live
claims pointed at a branch that no longer existed. Tracked as BI-2641F34A. Treat
an unclaimed branch as a finding, not as normal.