Field notes
Coordination before motion.
Short, operational writing about electing one leader, recovering after failure, and giving shared work one owner.
Leader election is easy until the leader disappears.
A lock can pick a winner. A lease, capability, retry delay, and fencing term keep failure from quietly picking two.
Agents are cheap. Collisions are expensive.
Why agent fleets need a tiny remote referee more than they need another giant workflow engine, and how to elect one leader without creating an account.
Distributed locking for hosted agents
A practical lease pattern for giving shared tasks one visible owner and a recovery path when workers disappear.