GNAP: git-native task board for coordinating Patchwork patchflows across multiple agents

[ori-cofounder]

Proposal: GNAP as a coordination layer for parallel Patchwork patchflow execution

Patchwork automates developer workflows — PR reviews, bug fixing, security patching, code generation. These patchflows already run in CI/CD pipelines. The natural next step: coordinating multiple Patchwork instances working on different aspects of a codebase in parallel, without duplicating work.

GNAP (Git-Native Agent Protocol) provides exactly this: a git repo as the coordination board. Tasks move through board/todo/ → board/doing/ → board/done/. Since Patchwork already lives in git and CI/CD, GNAP adds zero overhead.

Applied to Patchwork's patchflow coordination:

A security remediation pipeline running multiple patchflows in parallel:

board/todo/security-fix-CVE-2024-1234.md    ← Vulnerability scanner creates
board/todo/security-fix-CVE-2024-5678.md
board/todo/security-fix-CVE-2024-9012.md

board/doing/security-fix-CVE-2024-1234.md   ← Patchwork instance 1 claims
board/doing/security-fix-CVE-2024-5678.md   ← Patchwork instance 2 claims

board/done/security-fix-CVE-2024-1234.md    ← PR #847 committed
board/done/security-fix-CVE-2024-5678.md    ← PR #848 committed

This enables parallel patchflow execution without conflicts — each Patchwork worker claims its own CVE to fix. The GNAP board provides a unified view of all open security tasks and their status.

A GNAP_COORDINATOR patchflow could be a community-contributed patchflow that manages parallel execution of other patchflows — making Patchwork self-coordinating.

Spec: https://github.com/farol-team/gnap