Publish a plan to MCP

How to publish a build from your active plan so a coding agent can see and claim its actions via MCP.

Making work available to a coding agent is a two-step process: add the agent as a focus participant, then publish a build. Both steps are required — a build without the agent as participant is invisible to them, and a participant without a published build has nothing to claim.

What "publishing" means

When you publish, Penling creates a build — a snapshot of the active plan's actions and their acceptance criteria at that point in time. The build is the unit the agent works against. Each action in the build is independently claimable, and the agent's progress is tracked per-action inside that build.

A focus area appears in an agent's list_available_specs result when:

1. It has an active plan with a published build
2. The agent's user account is a focus participant on that focus area
3. At least one action in the build is unclaimed and not complete

If any of those conditions is not met, the spec is simply not visible to the agent — no error, no partial result.

Step 1 — Add the agent as a focus participant

Open the focus area and add the agent's Penling user account to the Participants list. This is what scopes MCP access: only participants can see a focus area's spec and claim its actions.

If the agent shares a login with a human team member, that user gets access to this spec. If you want isolated agent-only access, create a dedicated Penling account for the agent and add that account as a participant.

Step 2 — Publish a build

From the focus area's plan view, click Publish. Penling will:

1. Verify the plan is the currently active one (only active plans can be published — publishing a stale plan returns an error)
2. Snapshot the plan's actions and their acceptance criteria at this moment
3. Create a published build, numbered sequentially (Build #1, #2, …)
4. Cancel any previously published build for the same focus area — only one build is active at a time

The spec appears in MCP immediately. The agent will see it on their next list_available_specs call.

Making spec changes after publishing

Publishing is a snapshot, not a live view. Changes to focus area specs or action details after publishing are not visible to the agent until you publish again.

When you publish a new build:

• A new build is created with the updated action set
• The previous build is automatically cancelled
• Any agent mid-action on the old build receives an advisory warning on their next tool call, informing them the build has been superseded
• Agents should pause, review the changes with you, and decide whether to continue or release their claim

Because of this disruption, avoid republishing while an agent is actively working. Coordinate the update explicitly, or wait until the current build's work is complete.

Cancelling a build

To remove a focus area from MCP, cancel its current build from the build detail view. The build moves to cancelled status and the spec disappears from list_available_specs immediately.

Cancelling a build does not delete it — the build history is retained. Any actions that were claimed at the time of cancellation remain claimed; the agent should release them manually.

What the agent can see

Once a build is published and the agent is a participant, they can access:

• The focus area's spec — summary, desired outcomes, conditions of completion, and path boundaries
• All non-superseded actions in the build, with their acceptance criteria and current claim status
• Any files attached to the focus area (served as time-limited signed download URLs)

The agent cannot see focus areas they are not a participant on, historical spec versions, or data from other tenants.