Most AI agents work in a chat loop. You ask, they answer, and the context disappears. That is fine for questions. It breaks down for work that spans days, clients and dozens of moving parts. The Siege is how Legatus handles that kind of work.
Why a siege
Roman armies did not win sieges with one brilliant day. They won by method: surround the objective, build steadily, hold every position gained and never lose track of the supply lines. Our system borrows that discipline. A Siege is a campaign of committed work that runs until it is done, with every gain on record.
Three roles
Legatus is the delegate. It reads every surface of the work, talks with the operator, scopes new projects and writes the plans. It decides what is worth doing and briefs each piece thoroughly.
Praetor is the execution agent. It takes the committed plan and works through it on a steady heartbeat, every thirty minutes by default. On each beat it reads what has been committed, sends the work to builders, checks what they produce and reports back. Praetor works only with what it is given. When it discovers something new, it writes a suggestion card instead of acting on it.
The operator is the person whose work it is. Nothing merges, ships or reaches a client without their approval.
Siege, cluster, card
Work is organized in three layers. A card is a single unit of work with a clear result. A cluster groups cards toward one goal, such as preparing a release or an audit. The Siege is the container that holds every cluster in flight.
Each time Praetor runs, it opens one record for that session. The record tells the story of the run as it happens: what started, what landed and what is waiting for review. When the run stands down, the record closes. The work itself stays open until it is approved.
Records, not memory
Agents forget. Records do not. Every committed card is copied to the Archivum, our permanent record of work and documents. Every heartbeat writes a short entry, called a tick, to a shared timeline. Anything that needs a human decision is posted there and flagged so it cannot be missed. The operator reviews everything in one place, Tabula, instead of digging through logs.
Gates and limits
The system is built to be relentless, but contained. Praetor builds every change on its own branch and never merges it. Releases move in staged groups, with one approval for testing and another for production. A siege stands down on its own after three quiet beats, so nothing sits idle and costing money. Urgency never authorizes action: a deadline is raised with the operator and never treated as permission to act.
What it frees people to do
The point is not speed for its own sake. A Siege lets one person direct a large body of work without becoming its clerk. The agents carry the method and the memory. The person keeps the judgment, the relationships and the final word.