/internal/docs/PRIORITIES.md

Priorities

The ranked work queue for the autonomous improvement loop. The architecture-review pass (the architect) owns this file: each run it turns the roadmap plus an internal scan (gaps in the services → agents → workflows lifecycle, API coherence, drift, tech debt, test and DX friction) into a single ordered list — highest-value first — and links each item to a tracking issue. The hourly continuous-improvement pass works the top item whose issue is still open. So the architect decides what, and the increment loop builds it.

Reading / editing. An item is done when its linked issue closes (the increment that builds it adds Closes #<issue>). Roadmap phase (Now → Next → Later) is the primary ordering; internal findings are interleaved by value, not kept in a separate list. The human can reorder this list — or the issues — at any time to redirect the loop; direction always wins.

Off-limits to the loop (the architect proposes these as notes, never as queue items the loop can auto-merge): brand/positioning copy, breaking public-API changes, architectural rewrites. Those go to the human.

Work queue (ranked)

1. Add first-agent preflight diagnostics (#3604) — the 0→hero docs handoff shipped, so the next adoption bottleneck is install/runtime confidence before a new user tries the first provider-backed agent. Keep this first because the current strategic goal is developer adoption: one no-secret diagnostic should tell a developer whether Go, the micro binary/runtime, provider-key setup, and local ports are ready before the first-agent walkthrough.
2. Finalize the universe notify step after an agent-backed timeout (#3589) — recent live-provider CI exposed a real services → agents → workflows seam: an agent-backed notify side effect can complete while the client observes a timeout, leaving pending flow state and late duplicate notifications. Keep this high because it protects the 0→hero/reliability contract, but leave the adoption preflight first so the queue does not drift back to only internal hardening.
3. Prevent duplicate tool side effects in the plan/delegate harness (#3559) — correctness still matters where it protects real user trust. Plan/delegate is central to the services → agents lifecycle, and duplicate side effects undermine the “agent as dependable service” story.
4. Expose fallback_echo during A2A streaming fallback conformance (#3560) — keep interop conformance trustworthy without letting it dominate the adoption queue. This is scoped, testable, and protects the A2A promise developers see in the README and site.
5. Propagate agent run cancellation and deadlines through model and tool calls (#3544) — after the on-ramp items, the highest-value remaining Now-phase resilience gap is predictable failure semantics across agent runs, model calls, tool calls, plan/delegate, and flow handoffs. Tool retries and live-provider deadline tuning are in place; the lifecycle still needs cancellation/deadline propagation so work fails safely instead of becoming opaque loops.
6. Emit OpenTelemetry spans for agent run timelines (#3525) — recent work made runs inspectable, correlated trace metadata through scheduled dispatch, verified restart resume, added opt-in tool retries, hardened provider conformance, and fixed provider-emitted text tool calls. The next Next-phase step is to turn that RunInfo foundation into standard OTel spans for agent runs, model calls, tool calls, checkpoint/resume, cancellation/deadlines, and failures.
7. Add an AP2 mandate layer over A2A and x402 (#3552) — this is a forward interop investment, not a Now-phase blocker: Go Micro already has A2A agents and x402 paid tools, so a small signed-mandate foundation can keep agent payments aligned with the open-protocol story without pulling the queue away from adoption, resilience, or observability. Keep it additive and opt-in while the AP2/FIDO work settles.

Seeded by Claude Code from the roadmap + open issues; thereafter maintained by the architecture-review pass.