Runbooks and Work Modes

Choose run collaboration posture and goal posture for Managed Research.

Runbooks and work modes control different parts of a launch.

Runbooks

runbook controls collaboration posture. It does not choose the model.

Runbook	Use it for
lite	Focused, low-overhead work. This is the default.
heavy	Longer multi-actor work where intermediate synthesis matters.

Work modes

work_mode controls goal posture. It does not choose the provider.

Work mode	Use it for
directed_effort	Scoped, outcome-directed execution with a clear target.
open_ended_discovery	Exploratory work where discovery and option-finding matter.

Example

run = client.runs.start(
    "Explore likely causes of flaky benchmark results and summarize evidence.",
    host_kind="daytona",
    work_mode="open_ended_discovery",
    providers=[{"provider": "openrouter"}],
    runbook="heavy",
)

Backend preflight validates the final launch.