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    "article": "\n# clawhub/openai/symphony\n\n- **Archetype**: Agent orchestration specification + reference implementation\n- **Stars**: 14,973 (GitHub) / Discovered via ClawHub skill ecosystem (arnarsson fork)\n- **Last pushed**: 2026-03-27\n- **License**: Apache-2.0\n- **Discovered**: 2026-04-12\n- **Source**: clawhub-skills (indirect -- arnarsson/docker-essentials & git-essentials led to arnarsson/symphony fork)\n- **Skills found**: 0 (specification repo, not a ClawHub skill)\n\n## Summary\n\nOpenAI's Symphony is a language-agnostic specification for an autonomous coding agent orchestration service. It defines a daemon that polls an issue tracker (Linear), creates isolated per-issue workspaces, and runs coding agent sessions with deterministic retry, reconciliation, and workspace lifecycle management. Includes an Elixir reference implementation.\n\nKey architectural concepts:\n- **WORKFLOW.md contract**: YAML front matter for config + Jinja-style prompt template body, version-controlled with the repo\n- **5-layer architecture**: Policy -> Configuration -> Coordination -> Execution -> Integration + Observability\n- **Orchestrator state machine**: Issues progress through dispatch -> running -> completed/failed/stopped with bounded concurrency, exponential backoff retry, and reconciliation on restart\n- **Workspace isolation**: Per-issue filesystem workspaces with lifecycle hooks (after_create, before_remove)\n- **Agent protocol**: JSON-RPC app-server mode over stdio with structured event streaming\n- **2175-line SPEC.md**: Extremely detailed specification covering domain model, state transitions, error handling, logging, and recovery\n\n## Assessment\n\n**HIGH VALUE** -- This is the most architecturally relevant repo found in this batch. Symphony's orchestration model is philosophically aligned with babysitter's deterministic replay loop but approaches the problem from a different angle (issue-tracker-driven daemon vs event-sourced run). Key differences and learnings:\n\n1. **WORKFLOW.md as contract**: Symphony version-controls the agent prompt + runtime config in a single repo file. Babysitter could adopt similar patterns for process definitions.\n2. **Reconciliation on restart**: Symphony rebuilds in-flight state from the issue tracker on daemon restart, similar to babysitter's journal replay.\n3. **Workspace isolation**: Per-issue workspace with hooks maps to babysitter's per-run directory layout.\n4. **Bounded concurrency with priority dispatch**: Symphony sorts eligible issues by priority and dispatches up to max_concurrent_agents. Babysitter's parallel.all() is similar but at a different granularity.\n5. **Stop-on-state-change**: Symphony stops agent runs when the issue moves to a terminal state externally, analogous to babysitter's hook-driven iteration stop.\n\n## Extraction Priority\n\n**P0 -- Extract immediately**\n\n### Processes\n\n1. **Issue-Driven Agent Orchestration** (methodologies/): A full methodology for orchestrating coding agents against issue trackers with workspace isolation, retry semantics, and reconciliation. Covers the \"manage work not agents\" paradigm.\n\n2. **WORKFLOW.md Contract Pattern** (methodologies/): A methodology for defining agent behavior via version-controlled markdown contracts with structured front matter config.\n\n3. **Agent Session Recovery** (methodologies/): Patterns for restart recovery, reconciliation of in-flight work, and deterministic replay of agent state from external sources.\n\n### Plugin Ideas\n\n1. **Symphony Bridge Plugin**: A babysitter plugin that polls Linear/GitHub Issues and creates babysitter runs per issue, mapping Symphony's WORKFLOW.md contract to babysitter process definitions. Would enable babysitter to operate in Symphony's \"manage work\" paradigm.\n\n2. **Workspace Isolation Plugin**: Enhanced workspace lifecycle management with per-run hooks (after_create, before_remove), similar to Symphony's workspace manager.\n\n## Library Mapping\n\n| Extractable Process | Library Status | Action | Existing Path | Target Placement |\n|-------------------|----------------|--------|---------------|------------------|\n| Issue-Driven Agent Orchestration | NEW | Full methodology for orchestrating coding agents against issue trackers with workspace isolation and retry | - | methodologies/issue-driven-agent-orchestration/ |\n| WORKFLOW.md Contract Pattern | NEW | Version-controlled markdown contracts with structured front matter for agent behavior definition | - | methodologies/workflow-contract-pattern/ |\n| Agent Session Recovery | NEW | Restart recovery, reconciliation, and deterministic replay from external sources | - | methodologies/agent-session-recovery/ |\n| Bounded Concurrency Dispatch | NEW | Priority-based agent dispatch with max concurrent limits and exponential backoff retry | - | specializations/shared/bounded-concurrency-dispatch.js |\n| Workspace Lifecycle Management | NEW | Per-issue/per-run workspace isolation with create/remove hooks | - | specializations/shared/workspace-lifecycle-management.js |\n\n## Plugin Marketplace Mapping\n\n| Plugin Idea | Marketplace Status | Action | Existing Plugin | Target Placement |\n|-------------|-------------------|--------|-----------------|------------------|\n| Symphony Bridge Integration | NEW | Issue tracker polling with babysitter run creation and WORKFLOW.md contract mapping | - | plugins/a5c/marketplace/plugins/symphony-bridge-integration/ |\n| Workspace Isolation Enhancement | UPGRADE | Enhanced workspace management beyond basic run directories | babysitter core run directories | plugins/a5c/marketplace/plugins/workspace-isolation-enhancement/ |\n",
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