Make Kilo Swarm usable (epic) #13673

Feature has not been suggested before

• This is the existing shared-agent-board epic, revised around the smallest useful next milestone.

Describe the enhancement you want to request

Build on the working prototype in #13629 and make it usable as Kilo Swarm. Keep the existing board, Task runtime, and session UI. The next step is clear agent identity, useful communication during work, understandable messages, and concise guidance for when collaboration helps.

Support both independent solution attempts (search races) and complementary feature teams. Straightforward tasks should normally stay solo. This milestone does not require a new swarm engine or the same level of orchestration from every model.

Milestone outcome

• Agents and users can identify team members, their current work, and available execution state.
• Running agents can use material updates during work, without repeated stale reads or routine chatter. Finished or unknown recipients are not mistaken for available workers.
• Users can follow who posted what to whom and which messages were fetched, using existing sessions and honest evidence rather than inferred read receipts.
• Models receive short guidance for useful delegation, with both races and feature teams checked in existing benchmarks or focused examples.
• The user-facing feature is consistently named Kilo Swarm, without breaking existing tool, configuration, or storage identifiers.

Focused work

• Expose Kilo Swarm agent identity and execution state #13670: Agent identity, concise assignments, and runtime state for both agents and users, using existing metadata.
• Keep Kilo Swarm activity notices consistent with reads #13671: Correct interaction between activity notices and explicit reads, using the current cursor mechanism.
• Make Kilo Swarm messages readable in chat #13668: Compact message-first cards with clear routes, readable bodies, and delivery status outside message content.
• Follow Kilo Swarm message flow through existing sessions #13672: Follow related exchanges and actual read evidence through existing session/task UI, not a new dashboard.
• Guide models to use Kilo Swarm when collaboration is useful #13694: A small collaboration-guidance pass, validated for simple tasks, search races, and complementary feature teams.
• Introduce Kilo Swarm user-facing branding #13669: Kilo Swarm user-facing branding with compatible technical identifiers.

Implementation order

Start with identity/state and notice correctness. Continue the existing local message-card work and the small session-navigation/read-evidence improvements alongside them. Tune the concise guidance against the available metadata and verify it with existing benchmark cases.

Branding is included in this milestone and can proceed in parallel as a focused change; it is not postponed until a larger orchestration system exists.

Guardrails

• Reuse existing session/Task metadata, board_read, board_post, cursors, and execution records. Keep the feature experimental and scoped to a main session and its task descendants.
• Keep peer bodies in explicit tool results. Peer messages, names, and type labels never grant user approval or expand scope.
• Normal delegation through existing Task controls is part of the goal. A board post itself must not wake, resume, cancel, or assign work automatically. HOLD and VETO remain advisory.
• A stored post is not evidence of reading or action. State and read evidence must remain unknown when unavailable, and historical status must not be presented as live presence.
• Do not add an inbox service, ownership registry, dedicated handoff subsystem, global dashboard, new planner/model router, or benchmark platform for this milestone. Cross-root sharing and larger-scale storage/transport changes remain separate future work.
• Preserve the current configuration, tool names, database history, and permissions while introducing the Kilo Swarm display name. Respect release prerequisites documented in feat: add task-scoped shared agent boards #13629.

Current status and completion

#13629 is the prototype foundation and already contains the notice-only delivery design and documented QoS. The message-first card work is marked complete in #13668. #13672 remains open for session navigation and read evidence.

Complete this milestone when the linked changes are implemented and their focused verification is recorded. Keep unfinished acceptance criteria open rather than treating a rename, a working transport, or screenshots alone as proof of usable cooperation.