MSP / Minimal Seed Problem / Project
The easiest thing to lose in an open problem is not progress. It is the original intent.
MSP uses seeds to preserve the human problem, preferences, boundaries, and future cues; then it uses real feedback to decide which seeds stay folded and which should grow into delivery.
Protect the seed first. Decide what should grow next.
MSP does not rush to flatten an open problem into a fixed plan. It preserves the current intent and boundaries, folds complexity that should not be unfolded yet, and lets feedback select the next move.
Open Problem
Admit the problem is still growing; do not pretend the answer is complete.
Seed Proposal
Preserve what the human actually cares about in natural language.
Seed Step
Decide what should be concrete and what should remain strategically deferred.
Build Step
Grow only high-leverage seeds into delivery, validation, docs, skills, or workflows.
Feedback
Let real tasks, tests, and human judgment update the seed.
Read by task, not by taxonomy.
These pages now split the work: explain MSP, recover project state, and recover project topology.
msp-stack is the public delivery line grown from MSP.
msp4agent keeps the source problem, internal growth, and real feedback. msp-stack compresses that problem consciousness and seed discipline into a cloneable, verifiable, public agent workflow stack.
A seed is an attention anchor, not a TODO.
It is usually short and natural. Its job is not to write everything down; it gives future humans and agents a recovery point that keeps the problem from drifting.
Strategic Deferral
Fold non-mainline, high-complexity, or under-informed questions so the happy path can move.
Future recovery
Compress needs, uncertainty, and counterfactual futures into cues that can be picked up later.
Agent attention
Be concrete where it matters now and seed-fold where the future should remain open.
How does an MSP project start?
If everything starts with a research question, the first move is not templated project planning. It is a Seed Proposal in the owner’s original language.
What problem am I really asking? Why does it matter? What would a good resolution look like? What happens if it fails?
Seed Proposal
In msp4agent, the project-level Seed Proposal is hello_agent.md. It carries the project soul, core problem, long-term direction, and global constraints.
Build Step, not Coding Step
A seed can grow into code, validation, delivery, docs, skills, sites, workflows, or evals. It should not be narrowed to “write code.”
Where seeds live
System / Project / Folder / File is an attention coordinate system, not a closed list of filenames. The closer a seed is to the system or project root, the more strategic attention it needs; the closer it is to a file, the more it should act as lightweight local future context.
System
founder_seed.md / host seed / agent seed: long-term protocols and preferences for a system, host, or Agent Workspace.
Project
hello_agent.md: project soul, core problem, and long-term direction.
Folder / File
seed.md and inline seeds: local context, open questions, and future cues.
A seed file is a long-term alignment medium.
The latest hello_agent.md clarifies that the carrier depends on the specific matter and the communication context it needs. Default filenames help agents move quickly; they do not lock MSP into four fixed shapes.
Specific matter first
Projects, hosts, Agent Workspaces, folders, and local file questions can each need a different seed carrier granularity.
Keep the layer judgment
Host seed and agent seed are not new levels; they are usually system-level extensions over different entities.
Name the canonical source
The higher the carrier, the more clearly it must state where truth lives, so runtime copies do not become competing truth.
Internal guardrails stay visible, but they no longer lead the page.
These rules matter for agent handoff. They are not the first doorway for a new reader.
The site is a projection
The current source of truth is still /Users/cms/msp4agent/hello_agent.md. Public pages explain, navigate, and show progress; they do not define MSP in reverse.
nano-work is separate
A nano Card object is not an MSP seed level. It is a lightweight work object for managing needs, questions, ideas, and tasks.