Item states

Every item in a brand can carry a state that says how finished it is. The state is also a gate: only finished work leaves Archetype, so your agents never build with a half-made component or a draft logo.

The five states#

Work moves along one ladder, the same for everything a brand holds:

An item can also have no state at all, shown as Not set. Not set is treated like Complete and is served. That way a brand that never uses states keeps working exactly as before, and you only need states for the work you want to hold back.

What a state controls#

Inside the app, every member sees every item whatever its state. The state decides what goes out to everything outside it:

• Agents over MCP. get_brand and search_brand only list, find and return items that are Complete or Not set. See MCP tools.
• Brand files. BRAND.md, the tokens file and the downloadable bundle leave out anything not finished. See DESIGN.md, BRAND.md and skills.
• The share link. The public page at /share/<brand-slug> shows only finished work. See Sharing.
• Checks. Both the Check page and an agent's check_against_brand grade against the finished brand, so a draft logo never counts as the reference. See Check.

What carries a state#

Each of these has its own state:

• Components
• Templates
• Assets in the library
• Logos
• Artifacts
• Knowledge documents
• Icon sets

Foundations are reviewed a group at a time, since half a palette is no use to anyone. Colors, Typography, Spacing, Radius and Shadow each have one state for the whole group, set from the group's header on the Foundations page. Each logo has its own.

Set a state#

You need edit rights on the area the item belongs to: an Editor, Admin or Owner, or a custom role that can edit that area. See Members and roles.

1. 1

   Open the item

   Go to the component, template, asset, logo, artifact, Knowledge document or icon set.

2. 2

   Pick a state

   Open Status in its details, or the Status menu in the page header, and pick one. It saves at once.

3. 3

   Clear it if you need to

   To go back to Not set, open the same menu and select Clear status.

Set many at once#

On the Components, Templates, Artifacts and Assets pages you can pick several items and set them together. Tick the box on each card (on Components, Templates and Artifacts you can also choose Select from a card's menu), then select Set status in the bar at the bottom of the page and choose a state. Press Esc to leave the selection.

Find work by state#

The same grids have a status filter. Pick one or more states to see, for example, everything In review, or pick Not set to find what nobody has looked at yet. The filter lives in the page address, so you can send a reviewer a link to exactly the items waiting for them.

A simple way to use states#

1. After an import, leave what came in as it is and mark the parts you haven't checked as In review. They stay out of your agents' reach.
2. Look each one over, fix what the import got wrong, and mark it Complete.
3. When you replace something, mark the old version Deprecated instead of deleting it. Agents stop seeing it, and your team can still find it.

Every state change is recorded in History like any other edit.

Next steps#