Running Guildhall

Running Guildhall means letting the local service advance project tasks through the construction loop. The service asks coordinators what can move next, dispatches workers for trade work, collects inspections, and runs gates before work is called done.

From Projects & Workspaces

guildhall serve

guildhall serve is the friendly entrypoint: it makes sure the local service is running, opens the browser UI, and usually drops you into either the current project's shell or the service home.

From there, use the Start / Stop controls in the project shell. This is the main operating path: you can inspect Thread, Work, Needs you, task drawers, and release state without leaving the UI.

Projects & Workspaces uses the same runtime as the CLI. Progress is appended to ./memory/PROGRESS.md, events are streamed to ./memory/events.ndjson, and the full transcript per task lives under ./memory/transcripts/.

Progress also leaves durable evidence: a task blueprint, decision, change order, implementation diff, verification result, review finding, or learning record. Transcript motion alone is not enough.

From the CLI

Use the CLI when you want a blocking terminal process, scripting, CI smoke runs, or a domain-scoped debugging session.

guildhall run                    # run the current project
guildhall run my-app             # run a specific registered project by id
guildhall run --domain ui        # only the ui domain
guildhall run --max-ticks 10     # stop after 10 ticks (for testing)
guildhall run --one-task         # stop after one task reaches a handoff point

guildhall run blocks until Ctrl-C or until there are no ticks left.

For service-style usage without a foreground terminal:

guildhall start
guildhall open
guildhall stop

Fanout

By default Guildhall runs one task at a time per domain. Set concurrent_task_dispatch to fanout_N to run up to N tasks in parallel. Combined with worktree_isolation: per_task, each parallel task runs in its own git worktree.

Stop, pause, and stage transitions

• Stop: Ctrl-C the run process, use guildhall stop, or press Stop in the project shell. The current agent turn finishes gracefully; state is snapshotted.
• Pause or shelve a task: use the task drawer or project actions in the UI.
• Resume spec shaping: answer or follow up from Thread or the task drawer.

What a "tick" does

Each tick:

1. For each domain (filtered by --domain if set): ask the coordinator to evaluate its queue.
2. Dispatch any ready tasks to workers (respecting concurrent_task_dispatch).
3. For any tasks in review: run reviewer fan-out as inspection.
4. For any tasks in gate_check: run hard gates.
5. Persist state; emit events.

The Thread, Work, and Release views show the same state machine without needing to read Guildhall's source code.