Lead

Definition

The proposer of a commitment. The manager or team lead who creates a Shrubbery and sends it to a Knight for Handshake. The Lead is always the assigner on a Shrubbery row.

Avoid: manager, owner, requester, creator.

Role

The Lead is the system's initiator. Every Shrubbery has exactly one Lead, recorded at row creation and immutable after — even when a Renegotiation reverts the row to Pending_Handshake, the assigner_id does not change. The Lead's surfaces are the Garden (/dashboard, their daily orientation) and the Detail Sheet (the action dispatcher behind every card click).

A Lead is also the bearer of the team's Commitment Flow Score. The CFS shown on the Lead's dashboard is the roll-up of their team's reliability — the Knights they have asked things of. The Lead's Reciprocity axis, by contrast, measures the Lead's own reliability on rows where they are the assignee (i.e. their boss asked them something).

The Lead is the consumer of all four capture entry points (Smart Paste, URL Drop, Manual Contract, Inbox API). The Knight cannot initiate; capture is exclusively a Lead concern.

Lifecycle

Not a stateful concept — the Lead is a role attribution on each Shrubbery row, not an entity with states. Per-row, the Lead's interactions drive these transitions:

• Draft — Lead is still editing; row not yet sent to the Knight.
• Draft → Pending_Handshake — Lead promotes via Send action.
• Active → Pending_Handshake — Lead Renegotiated a substantive field.
• Active → Completed — Lead marks complete (Knight may also do this; either actor is valid).

Related guides

• Garden Overview
• Capture Flow
• Renegotiation Flow
• CFS Rules

Last updated: 17 May 2026