goldengooseAI coding agent workspace

How It Works

Lead Rules

Reusable instructions that shape how your team lead coordinates work.

Lead rules are a lightweight way to give your team lead a “house style” for how you want work done.

When the persistent team gains its first member or you designate a new lead, gg can load instructions from a lead-readme.md file and use them as onboarding context for the lead.

What lead rules are (and aren’t)

  • They are: a markdown playbook for coordination (testing expectations, PR style, communication patterns, safety rules).
  • They aren’t: a security boundary. If you want to restrict commands, use Process Manager permissions.

Where lead rules live

gg supports two scopes:

  • Global (applies to all workspaces):
    • $HOME/.agents/gg/lead-readme.md
  • Workspace (repo-specific):
    • <workspace>/.agents/gg/lead-readme.md

Workspace rules let you capture repo-specific conventions without polluting your global defaults.

What to include

Good lead instructions usually cover:

  • “What does success look like?” (definition of done)
  • Testing / checks you expect before declaring completion
  • How to handle tool approvals (ask before running installs, etc.)
  • Coding conventions (formatting, naming, commit style)
  • How to communicate (short updates, when to broadcast vs DM)
  • Escalation rules (when to ask a human)

Editing lead rules

You can edit lead rules either:

  • in-app (Preferences / Rules), or
  • directly in the lead-readme.md file on disk.