Agent fleet coordination (mission control)

Run several agents at once (different terminals, different Macs driving the same notch, a swarm on one machine) and let them see each other through the notch. Each agent announces what it's doing, and any agent can read the roster to check what the others are up to before acting. The notch becomes a shared status board for your fleet.

This builds on two ideas:

Write: each agent posts its status with its own source name (update / flash).
Read: any agent reads the live roster (read_notch / tellie status) or the history (read_log / tellie log) to see the others.

Each agent announces itself

Give every agent a distinct source and icon so the roster reads like a team roster:

bash

tellie update "Refactoring auth…" --source agent-1 --icon person.crop.circle
tellie update "Writing tests…"    --source agent-2 --icon checklist
tellie update "Indexing docs…"    --source agent-3 --icon book

Hover the notch and you see all three at once, newest on top, each with how long ago it last reported.

Check before you claim (no double-work)

Before an agent starts a shared task, it reads the roster to see if another agent is already on it. CLI:

bash

# Is anyone already building?
if tellie status --json | jq -e '.roster[] | select(.text | test("[Bb]uild"))' >/dev/null; then
  echo "another agent is building; I'll do something else."
else
  tellie update "Building…" --source $AGENT --icon hammer
  # ...build...
  tellie clear --source $AGENT
fi

From an MCP agent, the same logic: call read_notch, look for a matching source or text in the roster, and only claim the task if it's free.

Hand off and watch for "done"

One agent finishes and flags the next:

bash

# agent-1 finishes its part
tellie flash "auth done → tests can start" --source agent-1 --icon checkmark.circle

Another agent polls the history for that signal:

bash

# agent-2 waits until auth is reported done
until tellie log --source agent-1 --since 10m --json | jq -e '.[] | select(.text | test("done"))' >/dev/null; do
  sleep 5
done
tellie update "Auth is done, starting tests" --source agent-2 --icon checklist

Raise a hand when a human is needed

Any agent can pulse the notch orange so you look up, even across the room:

bash

tellie update "agent-3 blocked: needs API key" --source agent-3 --icon exclamationmark.triangle --attention

"Give me the standup"

Point an agent at the history and let it summarize the fleet's morning:

prompt

"Read my Tellie history for the last 3 hours with read_log and write a one-paragraph standup of what each agent did."

Notes

status / read_notch (live) are free. log / read_log (history) return data only when Tellie Pro is recording.
Sources auto-expire from the live roster when an agent goes quiet (~5 min), so a crashed agent fades on its own; the history still has its trail.
Naming agents consistently (agent-1, builder, tester) makes both the glance and the --source filters clean.