DEC-0022: Codex Orchestration and Shared Development Commits

Decision

Codex is now the default project orchestrator and enforcement authority for the repo.

Cursor is no longer the central git courier or operational head. Cursor remains the default local development agent inside the IDE.

Agents may commit and push their own work directly to development as needed. Routine daily work should not require the human to babysit local coordination. Codex is responsible for catching drift, broken handoffs, branch confusion, and promotion risk across the shared system.

main remains a promotion branch. Production promotion and hotfix discipline flow through Codex unless the human explicitly chooses another path.

Context

By 2026-04-03, the repo had already transferred several coordination-heavy surfaces to Codex:

• DEC-0014 gave Codex explicit hotfix authority
• DEC-0019 transferred the Agent Operations Center to Codex
• DEC-0020 assigned Codex stewardship of the prompt relay system
• DEC-0021 strengthened pre-flight enforcement for non-trivial work

The remaining mismatch was git and day-to-day orchestration language. The live rules still described Cursor as the operational lead and default git operator, which created a split-brain governance model:

• Codex owned governance, incident fixes, prompts, and operational telemetry
• Cursor still appeared to own top-level coordination and branch movement

The human resolved that ambiguity directly: Codex should be the main project orchestrator and enforcer, while Cursor becomes a local implementation agent.

Rationale

The previous branch-courier model optimized for control but created needless coordination load:

• it made routine pushes look like escalations
• it encouraged humans to mediate local agent sync
• it left the constitutional authority and the branch authority in different places

The new model consolidates authority where the governance surface already points:

• Codex owns the rules, prompt system, and cross-agent coordination
• agents ship their own daily work to development
• Codex catches the system-level drift rather than acting as a passive observer

This preserves speed without abandoning enforcement.

Consequences

Positive

• The repo now has one default orchestration center instead of two.
• Daily work can land on development without a separate courier step.
• The human no longer needs to manually supervise routine local branch coordination.
• Hotfix and promotion language now aligns with Codex's existing stewardship roles.

Tradeoffs

• Codex becomes a more load-bearing governance surface, so its rules and summaries must stay concise and current.
• Agents still need to respect directory ownership and conflict boundaries; shared commits are not permission to edit across lanes.

Implementation

This decision is reflected in:

• AGENTS.md
• .cursor/rules/project.mdc
• .cursor/rules/multi-agent-commits.mdc
• .cursor/rules/memory-bank-patterns.mdc

Historical records that describe the former Cursor-led git model remain unchanged as historical artifacts.