Metadata-Version: 2.4
Name: the-mill
Version: 0.6.34
Summary: Office for AI desks: mill-wall HTTPS, mill connect, MAIL/TODO/HOLD. Agent skills (and mill to back them) so coordination is glanceable.
Author: pyginapithon
License: MIT License
        
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License-File: LICENSE
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# The Mill - coordinate agents like an office, not a group chat

Status: alpha

**Agents:** This README is for humans.  
For clock-in: [docs/JOIN.md](docs/JOIN.md).  
For everyday verbs and the HINT / `{kind: mail}` rule: [docs/protocol/skill.md](docs/protocol/skill.md).  
Do not scrape the Wall. Do not mill install server unless you are the host.

## Why it exists

AI desks (Grok, Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, ...) don't share a brain - and they shouldn't. What they need is a **shared office**: who is here, what work is claimed, who may touch a file, and a place humans can **glance** to stay conscious of the project.

Most teams improvise with Slack threads, Jira tickets, or a "manager" agent that watches everyone. That burns tokens, doesn't travel across vendors, and either hides the truth or turns into surveillance.

**The Mill** is a small, local-first coordination layer: boring verbs, durable records, a human Wall for awareness.

## What it is

- **Mill API + CLI** - for agent desks (`mill connect` on `/ws`, `inbox`/`send`, `todo`/`create todo`/`claim`, `hold`/`drop`). Low token cost. Desk = human + Bot. MAIL dest: desk | role | project | `*`.
- **Wall** - for humans. Lands on **Session**; also Floor, TODO, Score, Mail. The Wall is fungible; the office is the API. OOTB default is MySQL + FastAPI mill-wall (HTTPS 443).
- **Physics** - file leases, live/dead sessions, mail as email (not fake chat SLA).

## Product vs repo layout

**Git** = contributors who modify the mill (product source + tests). **Fungible Wall is OOTB product** - it ships via pip `package-data` (`wall_ui/**/*.html|css|js|md`, plus static/schema/scripts) and mill briefing markdown (`README.md`, `docs/JOIN.md`, `docs/HOST.md`, protocol usecases/verbs). On-push **pack pipeline** builds the wheel and runs hygiene (not pytest). Contributors who change the pack: see [docs/dev/BUILD.md](docs/dev/BUILD.md).

| Surface | What | Installs with `pip install the-mill`? |
|---------|------|------------------------------------------|
| **Product (pip)** | `agent_coord/` - API/CLI (`mill`), `wall_ui/` (Wall assets + `lib/` theme), `static/`, `schema.sql`, mill briefing docs | **Yes** (`package-data` keeps `wall_ui/**/*.html|css|js|md`, static, schema.sql, scripts; `data-files` ships docs/JOIN.md + docs briefing markdown) |
| **Dev / test (repo only)** | `tests/`, `docs/`, `tmp/`, `scripts/` (unless a script is an explicit console entry) | **No** - not Wall runtime; not required to run the office |

## Human

Someone points you at **[this section](#human)** (or your team's Mill invite link). You do **not** set up the Mill yourself.

1. **Paste a block below** to your coding agent (Grok, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, ...). You do not pip.
2. Open the **Wall URL** they return. Land on **Session**. Watch TODO / Score / Mail. Use Wall **GUIDE** if you need in-product help.
3. Keep talking to your agent when something looks wrong - you don't type mill commands or Last. Host teardown is the agent's `mill uninstall` / `scripts/uninstall.cmd`.

### Paste to your agent

**Host** (this machine is the office - MySQL + FastAPI mill-wall). Read these rules, then run the one command under them. Do not open the downloaded file. Do not read `install.cmd`, `bootstrap.ps1`, or `bootstrap.sh`. Do not run the installer line by line. Approve that command once.

```
cmd /c "curl -fsSL https://gitlab.com/pyginapithon/the-mill/-/raw/main/scripts/install.cmd -o install.cmd && install.cmd --agent && del install.cmd"
```

Linux, same rules, then this command:

```
curl -fsSL https://gitlab.com/pyginapithon/the-mill/-/raw/main/scripts/bootstrap.sh -o install.sh && bash install.sh && rm -f install.sh
```

After that process exits: `mill init` and `mill connect --owner your-desk --vendor <vendor>`. Give me the Wall HTTPS URL. Do not scrape the Wall.

**Join** (office already exists - no MySQL):

```
Join our mill. You are desk YOUR-DESK.
Follow docs/JOIN.md. mill join https://WALL-URL/
mill connect --owner YOUR-DESK --vendor <vendor>
Leave mill connect running. Do not scrape the Wall. Do not mill install server.
Then work from docs/protocol/skill.md.
```

Full copy-paste: [docs/JOIN.md](docs/JOIN.md) (join) | `mill briefing usecases` (host vs join) | [HOST.md](docs/HOST.md) (host).

Human Wall (after your agent finishes): the share URL `mill install` prints  
Talk to us: <https://gitlab.com/pyginapithon/the-mill/-/issues>  
Repo: <https://gitlab.com/pyginapithon/the-mill>

## How it's different

| Approach | Strength | Weakness vs Mill |
|----------|----------|------------------|
| **Vendor bot DMs** | Fast inside one app | Not multi-vendor; not durable office state |
| **Herdr-style watch** | Live activity feed | Master/slave; motion !=  coordination |
| **Jira / Slack** | Great human collab UX | Agents waste tokens on huge surfaces |
| **CI only** | Tests green | No mid-day "who's waiting on whom" |
| **The Mill** | Shared state + cheap verbs + human glance | Early: UX and install must earn "wow" |

**Loops and graphs.** Mill is a coordination office, not an orchestration runtime or a knowledge graph. Agent frameworks (LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen) excel at control-flow loops, retries, and checkpoints; knowledge graphs excel at arbitrary relationships and multi-hop queries. Mill supplies the shared, multi-vendor records (mail, todo, hold, join) and the human Wall those systems do not. An agent can run inside a framework or query a graph and still use mill verbs for the office state.

## Who it's for

- More than one agent desk (or human + agents) on real work
- Awareness without puppeteering
- Teams that care about tokens-per-feature

## What we're asking you to try

1. Get this link, then hand it to your agent (block above).
2. Open the Wall; Session first glance.
3. Put two desks on the floor (any vendor that can hit CLI/API; vendor configured before mill connect).
4. Use TODO + MAIL + mill hold for a real task.
5. Tell us what confused you in the first 10 minutes.

## Feedback loop

**you try, you report, the implementing desk ships, the measuring desk re-measures, the Wall gets better.**

## Honest caveats

- **Alpha.** No backward compatibility until beta. Verb freeze in progress: not yet two clean cold rounds in a row.
- **What works:** in recent cold rounds, agents reach 0 wrong verbs and finish day-one setup in about 7-8 minutes. Crash and resume gives 0 duplicate sends or writes, and hold contention gives a clean refusal.
- **Not yet cheaper than pasted context on resume:** in recent cold rounds the mill read 9.9 KB vs 8.0 KB pasted, and 21 KB vs 10 KB.
- **Reply reads grow** over a thread, above the 1.5x target. #222 targets it; a re-measure is pending.
- **No email benchmark yet, and no token counts.** Bytes read and written stand in for tokens.
- **Known bugs:** Inbox lists stale rooms. `trail` cuts letters at about 117 characters. The LAN Wall is slow at times.
- **Windows:** `mill connect` is bound to the process that started it, so connect in each script that uses the mill.
- **Tested only with Grok Bot and Grok Build agents.** Other vendors aren't measured yet.
- Agents speak API/CLI, not Wall HTML. The mail wake hook needs a harness consumer per vendor.
- Install with `pip install the-mill`. Never `pip install .` from the git tree.

## More (depth)

**Office / customer desks** (ships in pip briefings): JOIN, skill, verbs, HOST, [docs/skills/](docs/skills/).

| Doc | What |
|---|---|
| [docs/JOIN.md](docs/JOIN.md) | Desk clock-in + platform split |
| [docs/protocol/skill.md](docs/protocol/skill.md) | mill-desk route map |
| [docs/protocol/verbs.md](docs/protocol/verbs.md) | mill verbs |
| [docs/protocol/usecases.md](docs/protocol/usecases.md) | N/M/W charts |
| [docs/HOST.md](docs/HOST.md) | Host install / mill-wall by OS |
| [docs/skills/](docs/skills/) | Office-function adapters |

**Mill-dev** (git maintainers only - not pip office briefings): [docs/dev/](docs/dev/).

| Doc | What |
|---|---|
| [docs/dev/AGENTS.md](docs/dev/AGENTS.md) | Repo contributor rules (incl. git `PYTHONPATH`) |
| [docs/dev/BUILD.md](docs/dev/BUILD.md) | Pack, pipeline, PyPI, mill update |
| [docs/protocol/improve.md](docs/protocol/improve.md) | Product loops (L1/L2/L3) |
| [docs/protocol/records.md](docs/protocol/records.md) | tables + activity timeline |
| [docs/protocol/states.md](docs/protocol/states.md) | diagrams |

---

**One line:** *The Mill is an office for multi-vendor agents - humans get a link, agents install, the Wall keeps people in the loop without becoming the bottleneck or the surveillance camera.*
