The workflow

AI-assisted research cycles through instructions, generated candidates, checking, selection and revision. TRACE-OS records that cycle for each unit of work, and keeps the decision to accept the work separate from producing it.

1. 1Direct the taskState the task and its criteria in your own words. They are kept verbatim.T
2. 2The agent executesIt works within the scope you gave, and drafts the trace record.T
3. 3Check the candidateRead what was checked, against what, and what was not.R
4. 4DecideAn actor independent of production accepts, returns or refuses it.A

Nothing in this sequence is blocked. A unit of work can be committed and shared before anyone decides on it; it is then shown as not yet accepted.

Deciding on the work that is waiting

Whoever holds the authority to accept, a coauthor or a lead researcher, asks what is waiting when they are ready to decide, for example before a draft goes out:

Say to your agent

What is outstanding?

The agent shows one row for each trace record, read from the records themselves. This one comes from an example project:

#	record	the work to accept or return	what hangs on it	what the agent chose	where it comes from	owners
1	20261007-yearly-shares	Compute the yearly shares of non-publication cases.	Needs you: it logs no choice, so what was chosen in it, and by whom, is not on record.	None recorded.	T1, Miros Zohrehvand: “Work out the share of non-publication cases in each filing year from workspace/sandbox/filings.csv, and the…”	Miros Zohrehvand (speakers of the cited turns)

This record logs no choice, so it is labelled needs you: what was chosen in it, and by whom, is not on record. The last column says whose work it is.

Below the table, the agent shows the commits that name no trace record, each with its subject and who executed it, so you see every commit nobody has accepted. In the example project, that is the setup commit, which carries no execution marker and so reads as typed by a person:

Commits that name no record

1 unaccepted commit(s) name no trace record; those are reached with --range:
  ea38262  2026-10-16  Record the setup and the project epochs (no execution trailer, read as typed by a person)

A decision about such commits names them directly, since there is no record to name.

The decision is then stated for each row, in the decider’s own words: “I accept number 1, the yearly shares.” Each decision names the work it covers, the version the decider read, so accepting one unit of work does not accept later changes. See Accept, return or refuse work.

If nobody has decided yet, nothing breaks. The checks report what is unrecorded or undecided, and the work stays visibly unaccepted until someone decides.

When work crosses a boundary

Some actions recur within the workflow, and a principle governs each of them. When one occurs, say so, and the agent records it with the rest of the work.

When	Say, for example	Principle	Guide
You want a model review against sources	“Have another model review this paragraph against its sources.”	R	Review work
Large or bulky files arrive	“Keep these PDFs with our shared files.”	T	Connect your shared folder
An input enters the project from outside	“Bring in this dataset and record where it came from and what we checked.”	C	Bring in outside material
A draft is ready for the shared manuscript	“Move the background paragraph into the manuscript.”	C	Move a draft into the manuscript
A standing instruction should change	“Adopt this revised instruction as the project’s default.”	C, E	Change a standing instruction
A failure is detected	“Open a defect: the share is the mean of yearly percentages, not cases over patents.”	E	Raise, fix and recheck a defect

The principles operate throughout the work. Intake can come before production, checks and decisions recur, and a correction can return the team to earlier work or to the instructions that produced it.

Reading the account back

At any point, ask for the project’s own account:

Say to your agent

Run the checks and tell me what they found.

The checks report; they never refuse. For each commit and each principle, the report says whether the action is recorded, missing, not applicable or unknown. The records make gaps visible, but they do not establish that every required action occurred. See Run the checks.