Seed the Ledger — queue human ideas for the agent

Seeding lets a human steer an automation without doing the agent's work. You write a small, well-formed ledger entry that carries the idea; the agent still does its own scoping tick later (spec, depth bar, milestone plan) — but from the human's idea instead of researching its own. Because a seeded item sits at scoping, it naturally blocks the agent from self-scoping new ideas until every human idea is handled: human ideas take precedence by construction.

Step 1 — Locate and read the automation

Find ledger.json and its CONDUCTOR.md (ask which automation if the repo has several). From them, learn: the item schema and id convention, the theme, capacity, maxItems, and the current item list. Do not proceed on schema guesses — the entry you write must match what the conductor reads.

Step 2 — Gather the idea (light interview, batch-friendly)

Per idea, collect — asking only for what the user didn't already give:

• Title and a one-sentence summary of what it is.
• Why — the problem or value, one or two sentences.
• Constraints — must / must-not statements the agent has to honor ("no paid APIs", "CLI not web", "reuse the shared auth kit").
• Links — any references worth the agent's scoping time.

Do not ask for milestones, acceptance criteria, or a spec — producing those is the agent's scoping job, and pre-writing them badly is worse than leaving them to the conductor's rules.

Step 3 — Vet before writing

• Theme fit. If the idea falls outside config.theme, say so and ask: adjust the idea, or widen the theme (a deliberate config change, its own commit)? Never silently seed off-theme work — the conductor will fight it.
• Dedupe. Read existing items' titles, summaries, and specs. Different means different in what the user of the output does, not renamed nouns. If it collides, show the user the existing item and stop.
• Cap check. Seeded items count toward maxItems. At the cap, ask whether to raise it (config change, same commit) or drop the idea.

Step 4 — Write the entry

Append to items with the next free id, matching the ledger's field shape:

{
  "id": "<next-free-id>",
  "title": "…",
  "summary": "…",
  "status": "scoping",           // always scoping — never further
  "seed": {
    "idea": "<the human's idea, verbatim intent>",
    "why": "…",
    "constraints": ["…"],
    "links": ["…"],
    "seededBy": "<name/handle>",
    "seededAt": "<ISO-8601>"
  },
  "milestones": [],              // the agent plans these in its scoping tick
  "refs": [],
  "lastReview": { "verdict": null, "evidence": null, "notes": null, "at": null },
  "blockedReason": null,
  "createdAt": "<ISO-8601>",
  "updatedAt": "<ISO-8601>"
}

Rules: status is always scoping; never pre-fill milestones or refs; never touch any other item; one commit for the whole seeding session.

Step 5 — Persist safely (a human edit is just another writer)

1. If the tree is dirty or the runner's lock file is held, a tick may be mid-flight — wait for it or stop; never write over a running tick.
2. Sync first: fetch and fast-forward, exactly like a tick does.
3. Write the ledger, validate the JSON parses and only items (plus agreed config changes) differ.
4. Commit chore(ledger): seed <id> — <title> (one commit even for a batch, listing all ids) and push. If the push is rejected, rebase using the ledger merge rule (union by id, more-advanced status wins) and retry.

Step 6 — Confirm the conductor honors seeds

Conductors generated from this plugin's template handle seeds natively. For an older or hand-written conductor, check its scoping stage; if it says nothing about seeds, offer to add this clause to the scoping row:

If the item carries a human seed, build the spec from it — keep its intent, honor its constraints, read its links — instead of researching a new idea. Never delete or rewrite the seed. Seeded items are scoped before any self-researched idea is started.

Then tell the user when the idea will be picked up: with capacity: 1, the next tick after the current in-flight item finishes; sooner if the fleet is idle.