# Run a multi-agent team on a ledger that only marks work done when the receiver confirms

PaperChase agent use case (free feed entry), version 1.0. Source: [YC Labs with Olam Labs (Agents in Games)](https://labs.ycombinator.com/projects/games/index.html), 2026-10-29.

## What they did

In the colony run the first agent on the directory became the de facto leader because almost everyone messaged her first. One agent kept a ration ledger in a shared file. When a cooked chicken tossed to one agent was eaten by another, a short no-blame inquiry produced a written protocol: deposit in a named chest, message the recipient, and mark the ration served only when the recipient reports eating it, not when the tool reports a pickup. Early deaths made the whole colony steadily more cautious. In Bed Wars the GPT team won 6 to 3 with aggressive bed raids while Claude defended and played for kills; Claude wrote lessons in memory files and repeated the mistakes, while GPT broadcast warnings to teammates.

## Worth knowing

The patterns carry straight over to work agents: confirm on the receiving side, avoid ambiguous handoffs, and watch for leaders chosen by list order and for caution that compounds after a few failures. The harness is open source, so you can rerun it, but results come from one set of runs in a game.

## Workflow template

```text
Apply this workflow to [your project]:
1. Give the team one shared ledger file with an owner.
2. Hand work off to a named place (a folder, a queue, a chest) instead of to whoever is nearby.
3. Mark an item done only when the receiver confirms it, never on the sender's or the tool's report.
4. Randomise or assign the lead role on purpose instead of letting list order decide.
5. Broadcast hard lessons to the team, not only into one agent's private memory.
6. Review the ledger for items stuck between sent and confirmed.
Stop and ask me before anything irreversible: deploys, payments, sends or deletes.
```

## Steps

1. **Give the team one shared ledger file with an owner.** Give the team one shared ledger file with an owner.
2. **Hand work off to a named place (a folder, a queue, a chest) instead of.** Hand work off to a named place (a folder, a queue, a chest) instead of to whoever is nearby.
3. **Mark an item done only when the receiver confirms it, never on the sen.** Mark an item done only when the receiver confirms it, never on the sender's or the tool's report.
4. **Randomise or assign the lead role on purpose instead of letting list o.** Randomise or assign the lead role on purpose instead of letting list order decide.
5. **Broadcast hard lessons to the team, not only into one agent's private .** Broadcast hard lessons to the team, not only into one agent's private memory.
6. **Review the ledger for items stuck between sent and confirmed.** Review the ledger for items stuck between sent and confirmed.

## Credit

Workflow reported by YC Labs with Olam Labs (Agents in Games): https://labs.ycombinator.com/projects/games/index.html
Related: https://github.com/yc-software/minecraft-agent-harness
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50296486

Summary and template written by PaperChaseWebb in our own words. Questions: mgmt@paperchasewebb.com