Scaling Structure

As your practice grows beyond a handful of tensions, structure becomes essential. werk provides containment, hierarchy, and signals to keep complex structures legible.

This guide is under construction.

Hierarchy

Any tension can be a parent. Children represent the structural components of a larger desired state:

werk add "the component I need" --parent 2

Containment

Children inherit context from parents — deadlines cascade, signals propagate. A parent’s closure ratio ([3/7]) tells you how much of its structure has resolved.

Signals at scale

As structure deepens, signals become more important:

• Critical path — the longest chain of unresolved dependencies.
• Containment violation — a child’s deadline exceeds its parent’s.
• Sequencing pressure — positioned work depends on unresolved prior work.

These surface by exception. You don’t monitor them — they surface when they matter.