Superseded in part. The Console is now a mode of the same app — /terminal/watch/ — not a separate surface served from a box. The premise of the original plan was that a box exists, and for a squad with no hardware it does not. What follows still describes what holding a board involves; where it describes a separate application, read it as the watch mode instead. Decided 2026-08-19, built 2026-08-20.

The Console

Where watch is held. Desktop-shaped, information-dense, built for someone sitting down with both hands free — the opposite of the Field Terminal in every respect, because it serves the opposite situation.

The board

The primary view, and mostly it is calm.

• Who's out — callsign, area, signed on at, expected duration, last contact
• Watch state — who holds it, who's on call
• Open signals — anything awaiting response
• Overdue — anyone past their window, surfaced but not alarming
• Conditions — weather triggers, cold or heat emergencies affecting tonight

No feed. No activity stream. The board shows current operational state, and when nothing is happening it says so quietly.

Query handling

The console holds the full directory with real search, filters, and map view — everything the field terminal deliberately doesn't have.

An incoming Query arrives with context: who's asking, where they are, what they need. The watch answers in seconds because they're sitting at a desk rather than standing in the cold.

When a query can't be answered, that's a directory gap — logged automatically, and it becomes the highest-value correction to make. The knowledge layer improves fastest at exactly the points where it failed someone in real time.

Raising operators

Assist requires reaching people. The console can raise operators who are out nearby, operators who are on call, or the wider on-call roster — and reports honestly when nobody answers.

Handover

Watch is handed to a named successor with board state intact: who's out, open signals, anyone overdue, anything unresolved. Or it's explicitly dropped to Automated, which is a normal and acceptable end to a shift.

Never silently abandoned.

The box

The console is not only software. It runs on a dedicated always-on node, which is what makes continuous watch possible at all.

Reference deployment is a Jetson Orin AGX running:

One node, and the whole system works for a small roster. That's the bootstrap.

Local inference matters beyond convenience. Operator signals, positions and queries never leave the box for a third-party model. A cloud agent would put the network's operational picture in someone else's datacentre, which fails the privacy posture everything else here is built on.

Console operators are operators

Whoever takes watch is doing the work, not supporting the people doing the work. Board time counts in their record. can take watch is an endorsement scope like any other.

This matters more than it sounds: it makes a genuine post for people who can't be in the field — through disability, circumstance, distance, or simply being better at a console than on a street. The network needs them more than it needs another body on patrol.