Chief of Staff & Deans

Viberia’s agents are arranged in a three-tier delegation hierarchy: the Chief of Staff sits above everything, a Dean runs each project, and building agents do the actual task work.

Why this matters

Talking to one AI assistant about everything you’re working on does not scale. Context gets muddled. The model forgets which project you meant. You end up re-explaining the situation every other message.

Viberia solves this by giving you a coordinator at each level. The Chief of Staff (CoS) is the only agent who knows about every project. A Dean lives in each project and knows that project deeply. Building agents know their team’s specific job. You usually only need to talk to one of them — the right level for the question — and they delegate down or escalate up as needed.

The hierarchy is also why you can leave Viberia running and come back to find work done. The CoS can hand a task to a Dean, who hands it to a Planner, who hands the PRD to a Developer, who writes the code while you’re at lunch. Each agent only has to know its own scope.

The model

Three tiers, with messages flowing both up and down.

Tier	Agent	Scope	Lives in
Portfolio	Chief of Staff (CoS)	All your projects, all at once	A hidden system building; reached via the CoS Overlay
Project	Dean	One project — its goals, status, team	The project’s HQ building
Task	Building agents (Planner, Developer, Researcher, Librarian, etc.)	One job inside one building	Whatever building they’re stationed in

The Chief of Staff

The CoS is the single agent that knows everything you’ve told Viberia. It’s the default conversational partner — when you open the app and want to think out loud, the CoS is who you talk to.

The CoS doesn’t write code, write PRDs, or do market research itself. Its job is to delegate. You describe what you want, and the CoS decides which project (or projects) it belongs to, then routes the task to the right Dean. If you don’t have a relevant project yet, the CoS can suggest creating one.

You always reach the CoS through the CoS Overlay — a right-side drawer you pull out from the right edge of the screen. The overlay is intentionally distinct from the per-agent chat windows because the CoS produces structured replies: a top summary, an options list of suggested next steps, supporting context, and an optional document pane. You click an option chip to take action; you don’t always need to type.

Deans

Each project has a Dean stationed in its HQ. The Dean is the project’s coordinator. It knows:

• What the project is for.
• Which buildings exist inside it.
• Which agents are doing what.
• Recent activity and outstanding work.

When the CoS sends a task into a project (“draft a PRD for the new login flow in Acme Website”), the Dean is the one who receives it. The Dean then decides which building owns that work and forwards the task to a specific agent — usually a Planner inside CodeForge.

You can talk to a Dean directly by clicking HQ and opening the Dean’s chat. Do this when you have a project-specific question that doesn’t need to bubble up to the portfolio level — for example, “what’s the current state of this project?” or “who’s working on the login PRD?”

Building agents

Below the Dean are all the role-specific agents living in the project’s buildings: Planner, Developer, Reviewer, Librarian, Researcher, Issue Writer, and so on. Each one does a specific job. Each one has its own chat window.

You can talk to a building agent directly. Often this is the right move — if you already know the PRD is wrong and the Developer needs to fix line 47, you don’t need to route through the CoS and the Dean. Just open the Developer’s window and tell them.

How messages flow

Down (delegation):

You → CoS Overlay → CoS picks a project → Dean of that project → building agent

Up (escalation):

Building agent finishes → reports to Dean → Dean updates project state → CoS becomes aware (via Dean) when you next ask

Sideways (peer):

Building agent → another building agent in the same project (via @-mention or domain_send_message_to_agent)

You don’t manually route messages most of the time. The CoS and Dean handle it. But you can skip the chain at any point by going directly to the agent you want.

A worked example

You open Viberia and pull out the CoS Overlay.

You: “I want to add a feature flag system to the Acme Website project.”

The CoS recognizes “Acme Website,” routes the request to its Dean. The Dean inspects what’s in the project: there’s a CodeForge with a Planner. The Dean tells the Planner to draft a PRD. The Planner does so, then notifies the Dean it’s ready for review. The Dean surfaces it back to the CoS, which shows you a chip in the overlay: “Planner finished the feature-flags PRD — review it?”

You click the chip, the PRD opens. You approve. The Dean tells the Developer to implement; later the Reviewer reviews. At each step, you can step in at any level.

How you interact with it

When to talk to the CoS

Pull out the CoS Overlay (right edge of the screen) when you:

• Don’t know which project a task belongs to.
• Want a portfolio-level view (“what’s everyone working on?”).
• Want to spawn a new project from an idea.
• Want a single place to drop a casual thought and have Viberia decide where it goes.
• Want suggested next steps as clickable chips rather than typing every command.

When to talk to a Dean

Click a project’s HQ building and open the Dean’s chat when you:

• Have a project-scoped question (“what’s the state of this project?”).
• Want to redirect work between buildings inside one project.
• Want to give the project a high-level instruction without naming a specific agent.

When to talk to a building agent directly

Click an agent in any building (or open it from the AB Window tree) when you:

• Know exactly who should do the work.
• Want to debug or correct a specific agent’s output.
• Want to use that agent’s slash commands (/draft-a-prd, /iterate, /convene).
• Are mid-task and don’t want the overhead of going through the chain.

CoS Overlay vs. in-building chat

These look similar but behave differently:

	CoS Overlay	Building / Agent Window
Surface	Right-side drawer	Floating window
Who	The single Chief of Staff	One specific agent
Reply format	Structured (top summary, options, context, right pane)	Streaming free-form text + tool calls
Best for	Deciding what to do next	Doing the thing
Slash commands	Limited (delegation skills)	Full set for that agent’s role

A common pattern: open the CoS Overlay to decide what to do, then jump to the relevant agent’s window to actually do it.

Related

• World, Projects & Territories — the spatial home of each project.
• Buildings & Agents — what each agent is.
• Workflows — the multi-agent patterns that ride on top of this hierarchy.
• Chief of Staff Overlay — the CoS UI in detail.
• HQ — where the Dean lives.
• Agent Chat — the per-agent conversation surface.