---
id: understand-index
title: "Understand"
description: "Understand workspaces, checks, project knowledge, and the decisions that stay yours."
order: 0
publish: true
kind: explanation
aliases:
  - "understand-index"
  - "system map"
  - "architecture"
  - "diagram"
---

# Understand

As you hand more work to agents, it helps to know what their checks establish, what the project remembers, and which decisions need you. These pages explain those ideas through situations you can recognize, so the next result your agent brings back is easier to judge.

- [Practice and roles](practice-and-roles.md) gives an overview of how you, your agent, and the project share the work.

For a particular question, choose a page below.

## What has the agent finished?

- [Proof](proof.md): which checks passed, which change they covered, and what remains for your review.
- [Worktrees and trunk](worktrees-and-trunk.md): where unfinished tasks live and how reviewed work joins the project's shared branch.
- [Checkpoints](checkpoints.md): how a review question reaches the agent at the relevant change, and when its answer needs your decision.

## What can the project keep for next time?

- [Standards](standards.md): how a measured improvement becomes a limit that later changes must respect.
- [Instructions, skills, and the map](instructions-skills-and-map.md): how rules, procedures, and project understanding survive the session that produced them.
- [Evidence and improvement](evidence-and-improvement.md): how local records help you and your agent investigate recurring friction.

## What stays under your control?

- [Local control](local-control.md): what discern runs and records on your machine, what it may write, and how its boundaries differ from those of your coding agent.

When you're ready to act, the [guides](../10-guides/README.md) explain the procedure. [Reference](../30-reference/README.md) is available when you need an exact field, command, or setting.