Phases, goals, tasks

Exosuit organizes work as a four-level hierarchy. Each level nests inside the one above it:

• Epoch is a thematic band of work that groups related phases. Epochs frame why a stretch of work exists.
• Phase is the active unit of work within an epoch. A phase is what you start, work inside, and finish.
• Goal is an outcome being advanced inside a phase.
• Task is a concrete action that can be started, logged, completed, and reviewed.

Phases contain goals, and goals contain tasks (RFC 00228). The point of the vocabulary is that you and the agent can always point at the same active item and agree on what “done” means for it.

Goals are PER-sized

A goal is calibrated to one Prepare → Execute → Review cycle (RFC 00230). That turns “what is the right size for a goal?” from a vibes question into a testable heuristic:

• Too big. Split it if Prepare reveals several independent implementation passes, if it spans unrelated subsystems, or if Execute would produce multiple artifacts that could ship separately.
• Too small. Merge it if Prepare and Review are pure ceremony, if it is really a single task inside a larger unit, or if completing it is not meaningful progress the user would notice.
• Just right. Prepare can audit it as one coherent unit, Execute produces one reviewable artifact, Review can verify it in one pass, and completion is a meaningful checkpoint.

Because each goal is a PER cycle, the order of goals in a phase is the execution schedule. Work the top incomplete goal, run its PER cycle, mark it complete with a log, and move to the next. See Prepare, execute, review for the protocol and concepts/steering for how stale goals are refreshed before tasking.