A Works

A Works is one folder on one machine. It holds a project's configuration, the plan of work under it, and the record of everything that has happened to it. hm calls that folder a Works, and it is the system of record: the copy in that folder is the real one, and anything that displays it — a terminal, the desktop board — is displaying a view.

That is the boundary the rest of these pages sit inside. Every other term here names something that lives in a Works, is written into a Works, or acts on one.

What a Works holds

• Configuration — which project this is, who is on it, and how work is executed.
• The plan — the goals, the initiatives under them, and the tasks under those.
• The record — an append-only history of every state change, and who or what made it.
• The workspaces — a working directory per active worker, so two jobs in flight do not edit the same files.

Who directs it

The human who directs a Works is the Principal. They set the goals, decide what is worth doing, and answer for the result. Everything else in hm exists to give that person more capacity without asking them to watch a queue: agents propose, agents execute, and the record makes both reviewable after the fact.

There is exactly one Principal role per Works and it is not automatable. An agent can draft a plan; it cannot decide that the plan is what the company should be doing.

Where a Works is not

A Works is not on this site, and it is not in an account. account.hmcortex.com holds identity, organisation membership and account-level settings, and holds none of your project's work. Nothing here uploads a Works, mirrors one, or needs one to be reachable from a network to function.

The practical consequence is that hm works offline, that a Works is backed up the way you already back up a directory, and that deleting your account would not delete a line of your project's history.