The Staves format
Every Staves board is a document in the Staves format: an open format for work shared by people, agents and systems — who does what, what passes between them, where a person decides, and how we know.
It is separate from the Staves app. Any tool can read or write it, and it is licensed under Apache-2.0.
What a board holds
Section titled “What a board holds”- Tracks. Who performs the work: a role people fill, an AI agent, a system, or someone outside the work’s control.
- Jobs and tasks. Work done for someone, with an outcome they would name. Jobs break down into tasks.
- Artifacts. What passes between jobs. A handoff exists only where something actually passes, so you cannot draw an arrow that carries nothing.
- Triggers, exits and loops. How work starts, the ways out, and repetition.
- Gates. Decisions the work cannot pass without, and the track that answers for each one.
- Tools. What each performer uses, and whether an agent can actually reach it.
Where each fact came from
Section titled “Where each fact came from”Each field can record its source: an interview, something a person drew, a document, the code, an execution trace, or an inference to confirm. When sources disagree, for example when the code refunds automatically but the support lead says every refund is checked, the format can record both claims until a person settles it. The current Staves implementation presents a dispute as an open question and does not yet preserve the competing claims on round-trip.
As it is, or as it should be
Section titled “As it is, or as it should be”A board is either a description of work that exists today (Mirror) or a design for work that should exist (Design). A design can point at the description it changes, and mark what it adds, moves or removes.
Status
Section titled “Status”Version 0.1 is a draft for comment. Breaking changes are expected before 1.0. The specification, JSON Schema and mappings are public.
Staves itself is not yet a fully conforming consumer. In addition to the dispute limitation above, preservation of unknown extensions, evidence, references and provenance is incomplete when saving through a Staves store. Read the specification’s conformance notice before relying on lossless interchange. See Use Staves without an account for the open tools and hosted boundary.