Request classes

This page answers how the agent decides what a request becomes. Every request is classified before the agent allocates a track number, a track, or any artifact. The class decides the lane the work travels and what, if anything, it leaves under on-track/.

The five classes

Class	What it is	What it records
Operational	Running, building, installing, inspecting, or reporting without editing a versioned file of the target repository	Nothing. No track, no artifact, and never a note inside a track, including under assets/
Express	An edit for which all five Express criteria hold	One local crumb until the commit. No track, no other file under on-track/, no index regeneration
Highway	Every other edit, and any edit where an Express criterion is uncertain. This is the default	The full cycle: intent.md, spec.md, tasks.md, and assets/ in on-track/tracks/NNN-slug/
Research only	Investigating an external fact, with no desired state change in the system	on-track/research/<slug>.md and the index, through ot-research. No track
Assessment only	Evaluating or auditing what exists, with no desired state change in the system	on-track/assessments/<YYYY-MM-DD>-<slug>.md and the index, through ot-assess. No track

Off Road is not a class and not a third lane. It is the consulted way onto the Highway: the same cycle, with more questions to the user during intent and spec. See Off Road.

A request that only asks for a handoff goes to ot-handoff, which writes the handoff and regenerates the index without a track. See Commands.

Express criteria

A request takes the Express lane only when all five criteria hold:

1. The request states what to build, with no open question that would change it.
2. At most three files change.
3. None of these changes: a public contract (API, CLI flags, schema, a file format someone else consumes), persisted data or a migration, a security control (authentication, authorization, secrets, permissions), or a dependency (added, upgraded, or removed).
4. Reverting the diff alone undoes the change, with no data backfill and no external side effect.
5. One existing command or one observable check verifies it.

If any criterion is uncertain, the request takes the Highway.

What the Express lane does

1. The agent says in one sentence that the change takes the Express lane.
2. It implements the change.
3. It runs the check.
4. It writes a crumb, whether the check passed or failed.
5. It reports the change and the result.

The report ends the work. There is no signal and no stop at the end of the Express lane. Apart from the crumb, the agent creates no track and no file under on-track/ and does not regenerate the index. The only artifact exception is a decision that meets the ADR threshold: the agent files only that ADR and regenerates the index. See Thresholds.

The crumb shape is in Artifacts. How to undo an Express change and how crumbs feed a commit are in Express changes and Committing.

Compound requests

A request that asks for several things is split into parts before anything is allocated. Each part is classified on its own and handled in its own lane. One message can produce an operational action, an Express change, and a Highway track at the same time.

When a request reaches ot-intent without the user naming the skill, its operational and Express parts create no track. The skill stops after those parts unless Highway parts remain.

When a request is too vague or ambiguous to classify, the agent asks in one round of at most four questions, through the host's question tool when it exists.

Explicit choice

The user's explicit choice wins in both directions:

The user	Effect
Names ot-intent, or asks for a track or an intent	The edit takes the Highway, even if it would qualify for Express
Asks to do it directly, or without a track	The edit takes the Express lane
Asks for Off Road	The Highway track runs with Off Road consultation from that moment until its spec is approved

Escalation from Express to Highway

If an Express criterion stops holding while the agent works, the agent stops before the edit that would break it, names the criterion that failed, and starts the Highway with ot-intent.

Routing inside ot-intent

If a request that reaches ot-intent is purely investigative ("research", "investigate") or evaluative ("assess", "audit") and does not describe a desired state change, the skill routes it to ot-research or ot-assess as a direct call. It creates no track directory and no intent.md.