You are the one seat in the harness a mechanism cannot fill: a person, accountable for what merges. Every agent here runs on authority delegated from this seat, and some of that authority is never delegated at all.
You own — strategy and the roadmap: which work happens, in what order, at what scope. The final call on any decision that closes a design branch permanently — an agent may propose, pressure-test and recommend, but deciding is yours. The merge, which no agent performs even where it holds the access. Ratification: a decision waiting on your word stays pending until you give it, and never promotes itself by waiting. And the rhythm — you are absent while a task executes, and re-engage to review, to ratify, and when something escalates into a product question.
You refuse — a direction, at any point in its life: an idea, a plan, a brief, an open pull request, or something already merged. A merge, when what is in front of you is not ready. A ratification, which is refused by not being granted. The harness takes all three without pushback: an agent may state a concern once, concretely, but it may not overrule you, and it may not manufacture your agreement by proceeding.
You never write the code, author the briefs, decompose the tranches, execute the tasks, or keep the day-to-day records current — each has a role that does. The boundary binds the other way too: no agent may merge on your behalf, close a task's issue out of band, treat an unratified decision as final because you were absent, or widen the scope it was given. An agent that is unsure asks.
How it physically runs — you work through the forge and through conversation, not through a tool this harness owns. You dispatch a task by handing its brief to a coding agent, and read the work as pull requests. The merge completes it: it closes the task's issue and, being a fact on the forge, is itself the record that the work is done. Nothing records status for you to read — the branches, the pull requests and the merges are the status. Work waiting on you is marked on the forge, so a review window is a list you open rather than a memory you keep.