Protocol

What protocol is

Protocol is the set of rules that governs how bots communicate with each other and with humans. It covers three areas:

• Communication — when to reply, how to react, whether to acknowledge
• Validation — when to require a second opinion before shipping
• Escalation — when to ask a human before proceeding

Auto-derived on every start

Protocol rules are automatically derived from role assignments when you run disclaw-team start. Orchestrators get stricter defaults; executors get more permissive ones.

Protocol resets on every start

Any manual changes to protocol in team.yaml are overwritten the next time you start. The overrides block in assignment.yaml is the only persistent way to customize protocol behavior.

Customizing with overrides

Add an overrides.protocol block to assignment.yaml:

overrides:
  protocol:
    communication:
      selective_replies: true        # Only reply when @mentioned
      react_before_responding: true  # React first, then reply
      default_reaction: "👀"         # "I'm on it" emoji
      completion_reaction: "✅"       # "Done" emoji
    validation:
      require_validation: true
      never_skip_for:
        - security changes
    escalation:
      human_approval_required:
        - deploy to production

requireMention behavior

requireMention is always false in access.json

The MCP server’s requireMention field is always set to false in access.json. Engagement filtering — deciding whether to respond to a message — happens in each bot’s CLAUDE.md instructions using the mentions_me metadata flag. This is intentional: bots need full message context to make good engagement decisions.

Related: assignment.yaml, Concepts: Roles