ntm

name	ntm
user-invocable	false
skill_api_version	1
hexagonal_role	supporting
consumes	["pane-command-request"]
produces	["ntm-robot-state","agent-worker-transcript"]
context_rel	[{"kind":"supplier-to","with":"agent-native"}]
metadata	{"capabilities":["ntm"],"effects":["manage_ntm_panes","dispatch_pane_commands"],"canonical_status":"canonical","disposition":"keep_optional_adapter","tier":"execution","dependencies":[]}
description	Use NTM as an optional pane adapter for caller-supplied roles and commands. Triggers: "ntm", "tmux panes", "ntm robot state".
practices	["pragmatic-programmer"]
output_contract	factual session, pane, command, and observation results

NTM — optional pane adapter

NTM hosts explicit agent roles in persistent panes. It is transport, not an AgentOps lifecycle controller. The caller chooses the panes, roles, commands, write scopes, and stopping point.

Robot surfaces work because they report what the pane is doing, not what was sent to it; a dispatch layer that only proved delivery would let every dead worker look busy.

Judge pane liveness by the truth-stack, strongest first: new artifacts on disk, then transcript growth, then robot state and attention flags, then bare process existence. A successful prompt send sits below all of these and proves nothing about work.

Named failure mode — kill-the-witness: restarting a stuck pane before capturing its state, destroying the only evidence of why it stalled.

Anti-pattern: restarting an unresponsive pane as the default remedy. Corrective: rescue before restart — snapshot robot state and transcript, attempt a nudge, and restart only when the truth-stack shows no liveness at any level.

Boundary

• Never start or probe NTM merely because it is installed.
• Discover the live command contract with ntm --help, ntm --robot-capabilities, and ntm --robot-snapshot before unfamiliar actions.
• Dispatch each caller-supplied command once. NTM does not select work, retry a failed command, validate a candidate, integrate changes, or decide what runs next.
• Pane roles are descriptive. They grant no ownership, admission, Git, release, or delivery authority.
• Concurrent writers require caller-supplied disjoint scopes and whatever isolation the repository requires. NTM does not infer safe concurrency.
• Safety, lock, mail, and pipeline features remain substrate facts. Their state cannot change an RPI phase result or semantic verdict. The adapter cannot select AgentOps semantics, issue a binding verdict, or turn factory completion into delivery or validation proof.

One-shot dispatch

1. Record the explicit session, pane, role, working directory, and command.
2. Inspect robot capabilities and current snapshot.
3. Create or select only the named pane.
4. Send the command once.
5. Observe robot state, attention, and transcript until the command exits or the caller's observation window ends.
6. Return the factual result and stop.

For a software-factory layout, the caller may name producer, tester, validator, or integrator panes. The same identity rule still applies: a validator for a candidate must have a distinct context identity from its author. Merely placing two roles in different panes is a declared runtime fact, not proof of semantic independence. Mixed-model judgment panes follow the agent-native model-dispatch recipe (probe, disclose, never ).