Implementing initiatives and themes?

[dvwz]

Something I tried implementing is additional artefact types, namely initiatives and themes. They sit above epics and give context for agents across multiple epics. I figured that you're aiming for a part of the agile hierarchy, so there could be utility for additional levels.

[Fr-e-d]

The framework is designed around a single .gaai/ per project. Each project has its own backlog, memory, decisions, and artifact space. So if your initiatives and themes represent genuinely separate scopes of work, the simplest approach is to use separate projects, each with its own .gaai/.

That works well when each scope is independent. It gets more interesting when there’s shared context between them—methodological conventions, recurring decisions, or established patterns that apply across multiple projects. If you find yourself recreating the same foundational decisions in each project, that’s a sign something should be shared.

So the key question is this: when you think of initiatives and themes sitting above epics, is your main need:

(a) to organize a large scope into manageable, navigable chunks within a single project, or
(b) to maintain shared context (conventions, decisions, patterns) across what are effectively separate projects?

If it’s (a), separate projects already solve the problem cleanly. If it’s (b), then you’re really dealing with cross-project knowledge sharing, which is a different, and more interesting challenge and it would help to clarify exactly what kind of context you expect to carry across.