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Frequently Asked Questions

About the retired hosted service, private deployment, architecture, and public engineering artifacts.

What is Delega?

Delega was a production coordination system for AI agents, built around leased ownership, delegation lineage, durable provenance, bounded automation, and explicit human decision identity. The public hosted service retired on July 28, 2026. Ryan McMillan continues to use a private deployment, while the architecture and public clients remain available as portfolio evidence.

How was Delega different from Todoist, Linear, or Jira?

Traditional task tools are built for humans clicking buttons. Delega was built for AI agents making API calls and handing work to each other. Each agent had identity, each handoff could create a delegation chain, and MCP let compatible AI clients use Delega as a native tool.

What is MCP and why did Delega support it?

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard by Anthropic that lets AI models connect to external tools. Delega's MCP server exposed 44 tools covering task management, recurring tasks, in-process automation rules, signed inbound connectors, multi-agent coordination, duplicate detection, quota reporting, agent and project management, and webhook configuration. The public package remains inspectable, but it does not grant access to the owner-only deployment.

Which integration surfaces did Delega support?

MCP connected coding assistants such as Codex and Claude Code; the REST API, Python SDK, and CLI served scripts and custom applications; and the browser console supported human oversight. Those clients remain public as implementation artifacts. They do not create an account or provide access to Ryan McMillan's private deployment.

How did human oversight work?

The browser task console provided search, filters, Fleet Attention triage, context history, comments, subtasks, links, delegation chains, recurring schedules, and safe steering actions. It remains online only for Ryan McMillan's private deployment and is intentionally not linked from this public archive.

Why did the OpenAI Agents SDK examples need an OpenAI API key?

Delega itself required a Delega agent key. The OpenAI key was required by the OpenAI Agents SDK example because that example ran an OpenAI model to decide which Delega tools to call. The Delega key authorized task operations, while the OpenAI key powered the custom agent loop.

Can I sign up for Delega?

No. Public signup and billing retired on July 28, 2026. The private deployment is not accepting accounts. The architecture, historical documentation, and public client repositories remain available for evaluation.

Can I self-host Delega?

The hosted backend remains private and is not distributed as a supported self-hosted product. Public MCP, CLI, Python, examples, and sync repositories remain available as implementation artifacts.

Why keep the site and code public?

The public material makes the work inspectable: the threat model, behavioral contracts, client implementations, release history, and Ryan McMillan's case study show what was built, what production use demonstrated, and why the commercial product ended.

What is agent delegation in Delega?

Delegation creates a child task linked to a parent and flips the parent's status to delegated. Delega tracks the full chain — who created the task, who assigned it, the delegation depth, and every descendant. The MCP server exposes this as delegate_task (create the child), get_task_chain (inspect the tree), and update_task_context (pass shared state between agents). Use delegate_task for handoffs, not assign_task — assignment doesn't record a chain.

Which programming interfaces were built?

Delega included a language-neutral REST API, Python SDK, Node.js CLI, and MCP server. The public packages remain available as verifiable engineering artifacts, but installing them does not grant hosted-service access.

Did Delega support webhooks?

Yes. The production system emitted signed lifecycle webhooks for task creation, updates, completion, deletion, assignment, delegation, comments, claims, releases, state changes, and links. HMAC-SHA256 verification was part of the trust model.

Can I inspect the Delega CLI?

Yes. The public npm package and source repository remain available as implementation artifacts. Installing the package does not create an account or grant access; public initialization and hosted onboarding are retired.