todo: urgent — an affordance for scope, and for the request that assumes another chat's context

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

TODO.md

@@ -17,14 +17,15 @@ the owner's OS user and can never be granted. Indirection there really is accide
 ## Urgent
 
 - **due 2026-08-22** — **Settings to choose which server each feature uses** — [fleet/settings-to-choose-which-server-each-feature](todo/fleet/settings-to-choose-which-server-each-feature.md)
+- **An affordance: a scoped agent warns when a request lands outside its scope** — [affordances/an-affordance-a-scoped-agent-warns-on-the](todo/affordances/an-affordance-a-scoped-agent-warns-on-the.md)
 
 ## Themes
 
-**90 open, 29 closed**, across 31 themes.
+**91 open, 29 closed**, across 31 themes.
 
 | Theme                                                                                      | Open | Closed |
 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ---- | ------ |
-| [Affordances](todo/affordances/)                                                           | 1    | 0      |
+| [Affordances](todo/affordances/)                                                           | 2    | 0      |
 | [Agents coordinating agents](todo/agent-coordination/)                                     | 2    | 0      |
 | [Speaking into a session from the backend](todo/agent-delivery/)                           | 1    | 1      |
 | [Backburner](todo/backburner/)                                                             | 3    | 0      |
@@ -65,6 +66,7 @@ the owner's OS user and can never be granted. Indirection there really is accide
 
 ## Newest ten
 
+- `2026-08-25` **An affordance: a scoped agent warns when a request lands outside its scope** — [affordances/an-affordance-a-scoped-agent-warns-on-the](todo/affordances/an-affordance-a-scoped-agent-warns-on-the.md)
 - `2026-08-25` **Resurrect Projects/Apps** — [backburner/resurrect-projects-apps](todo/backburner/resurrect-projects-apps.md)
 - `2026-08-23` **A worker cannot verify that the owner delegated to a manager, so it has to ask every time** — [agent-coordination/a-peer-cannot-verify-a-delegation](todo/agent-coordination/a-peer-cannot-verify-a-delegation.md)
 - `2026-08-23` **An agent cannot learn its own transcript id, so it cannot sign its own work** — [agent-coordination/an-agent-cannot-learn-its-own-session-id](todo/agent-coordination/an-agent-cannot-learn-its-own-session-id.md)
@@ -74,4 +76,3 @@ the owner's OS user and can never be granted. Indirection there really is accide
 - `2026-08-22` **A plugin's permission should be on for every role by default, off only on request** — [multi-user/a-plugin-s-permission-should-be-on-for-every](todo/multi-user/a-plugin-s-permission-should-be-on-for-every.md)
 - `2026-08-22` **A user's settings should export and import as a plain file** — [settings/a-user-s-settings-should-export-and-import-as](todo/settings/a-user-s-settings-should-export-and-import-as.md)
 - `2026-08-22` **The same for system settings, owned by the Super Admin** — [settings/the-same-for-system-settings-owned-by-the](todo/settings/the-same-for-system-settings-owned-by-the.md)
-- `2026-08-22` **All keyboard shortcuts configurable** — [shell/all-keyboard-shortcuts-configurable](todo/shell/all-keyboard-shortcuts-configurable.md)

todo/affordances/an-affordance-a-scoped-agent-warns-on-the.md

@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+id: affordances/an-affordance-a-scoped-agent-warns-on-the
+title: 'An affordance: a scoped agent warns when a request lands outside its scope'
+theme: affordances
+status: open
+priority: urgent
+created: 2026-08-25
+date_source: stated
+order: 2
+---
+
+**An affordance: a scoped agent warns when a request lands outside its scope.** Wanted 2026-08-25,
+urgent. Born from a real miss the same day: a commander-coordination thread landed in the standing todo
+chat, and the agent acted on it instead of noticing it was not its job. The owner keeps many sessions
+open with different roles, and a message in the wrong one currently gets executed by whoever receives
+it.
+
+One affordance, two triggers, both ending in the same move — **one line, "this may be meant for another
+chat?", then wait for the confirm; on a confirm, do it without further protest**:
+
+1. **Named scope.** The session has been named or tasked with a specific thing — a commander's task, a
+   chat the owner titled, a role stated in conversation ("you are my todo guy"). A request outside that
+   scope gets the warning first. Filing or noting something ABOUT another subject stays in scope;
+   DOING the other subject does not.
+
+2. **No name, but the request assumes a context this conversation does not hold.** Mid-work, a message
+   arrives about something the agent has never heard of — and the phrasing assumes it knows exactly
+   what is meant ("as I explained", "the change we agreed", a "he" with no referent here). That
+   assumption is the signal: the context exists in SOME chat, and it is not this one. Warn the same
+   way.
+
+The second trigger is the one that earns the affordance: it needs no configuration at all, only the
+observation that the owner is speaking to a shared history the transcript does not contain.
+
+Notes for whoever writes it: affordances live in `capabilities/affordances/` and reach every Claude
+session per turn via `affordanceBlock` — hot, no restart. "What am I named or tasked with" already has
+partial answers — a commander gets its identity in the `commanderBlock` preamble, and a chat's title
+lives in the transcript's own `summary` entries — but trigger 2 deliberately works without either.
+Keep the warning cheap and single-shot: a wrongly-suspicious agent costs one line; a wrongly-obedient
+one costs what the todo chat paid on 2026-08-25 — work done in the wrong place by the wrong agent.