Agents & orchestration
One project manager and six roles per project — how hlix coordinates a team of AI agents to deliver work end to end.
Every project has one team: a project manager and as many agents as the work needs. The project manager triages new requests before it plans them.
The team
Section titled “The team”The project manager sits above six roles. It hires one role for each cycle, and every cycle runs as one build agent run in a short-lived Cloud Machine of its own, on the cycle’s own branch. Independent cycles run in parallel, up to your Parallel cycles setting.
The project manager
Section titled “The project manager”The project manager is accountable for the whole project. It turns a brief into a roadmap, breaks the roadmap into cycles, starts the work, evaluates the results, and decides what comes next: continue, send feedback, re-plan, or finish.
The project manager coordinates delivery; build agents make code changes in their cycle runs.
Its model is the Project manager model, set in Settings → Models & accounts → Defaults.
It works from the current state
Section titled “It works from the current state”Ask the project manager about current progress, priorities, review findings or cost. It reads the project’s records to answer and uses those records to coordinate the next work.
Work happens in cycles
Section titled “Work happens in cycles”For each cycle, the project manager selects a role and creates an ordered checklist. The build agent implements it on the cycle’s branch. Independent cycles can run in parallel; dependent cycles wait for their prerequisites.
New work goes through triage
Section titled “New work goes through triage”Triage checks each new request against existing work before it becomes a cycle. The project manager plans accepted work and starts ready cycles within your Parallel cycles setting.
How it keeps the project moving
Section titled “How it keeps the project moving”The project manager responds to requests, completed cycles and review findings. It coordinates retries, adjusts the plan and starts the next ready work. Review feedback returns to the cycle’s checklist for its build agent to address on the same branch. See Cycles.
Triage
Section titled “Triage”The project manager assesses each new request first: overlap with existing work, complexity, risk and urgency. Its decision includes a rationale you can read on the cycle.
The same Project manager model runs the project manager’s triage, planning and chat. See Triage.
The project manager hires one role per cycle by matching the work to the role’s description. You do not assign roles by hand. It can also hire one of your Workspace’s own custom agents.
| Role | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Senior Engineer | General implementation, refactors and difficult changes |
| Product Engineer | Feature work driven by product intent |
| UI Engineer | Interface work, layout and interaction |
| QA Engineer | Tests, verification and reproducing failures |
| Security Engineer | Security-sensitive changes and review |
| Technical Writer | Documentation and written deliverables |
Your project’s instructions, activated skills and relevant memories guide the agents’ work. See Context & memory.
Which coding agent runs a cycle
Section titled “Which coding agent runs a cycle”A role describes the build agent’s job, such as UI Engineer or Technical Writer. The coder is the program it uses to work with your code.
Hlix Code is the default. You can choose an external coder for a project or Workspace and select its funding independently. Each coder uses the cycle’s isolated branch, project context, verification and review process.
Watching and messaging the team
Section titled “Watching and messaging the team”You can follow the project manager’s work live on the project page, send it a message while it is working, and stop its current turn. See The dashboard.
You can also message a cycle directly. Its build agent reads the message on its next turn; an urgent message asks the agent to stop the current turn first. A message to a finished cycle becomes new work through triage.
Stopping the project manager’s current turn does not stop cycles already in progress. To stop a cycle, use its own stop action. Watching requires view access; sending a message and stopping require the Can message permission.
Why one team per project
Section titled “Why one team per project”A project is one unit of intent: one product, one client engagement, one initiative. One project manager per project gives a single answer to “what are we building and why”, and one accountable agent in charge of the delivery. Scale comes from running more cycles at once, not from adding more project managers.
Project commands, application tests and builds run in isolated Cloud Machines. Reviewed cycles collect on the preview branch for your final merge.