What is the Build Queue?
The Build Queue is the third surface inside a Pathmode Product, after the Evidence Board and the intents themselves. It's where approved IntentSpecs go to ship.
Visually it's a Kanban board — columns for status (approved, in progress, in review, shipped, verified). Each card is an intent with its full spec attached: objective, outcomes, evidence anchors, edge cases, verification criteria.
Why a separate queue
Most teams already have a Kanban or backlog tool — Linear, Jira, GitHub Issues, ClickUp. The Build Queue isn't trying to replace them. It's the staging surface where intent meets execution.
Three things happen in the Build Queue that don't happen in a generic tracker:
- Specs travel with the work. When an intent is exported to Linear, the spec — not a one-line title — goes with it. The agent or engineer picking it up has the full context.
- Verification stays linked. When a shipped intent is verified (manually or by AI), the result lives next to the spec, not buried in a closed ticket.
- Evidence stays anchored. The friction that justified the intent is still one click away. Nothing decouples from its source.
From spec to shipped
The typical flow:
- Evidence accumulates on the Evidence Board
- A spec is drafted, reviewed, approved
- The approved spec lands in the Build Queue
- Export to your engineering tracker (Linear, Jira, GitHub Issues)
- After ship, the intent is verified — outcomes, constraints, and edge cases checked against what actually shipped
- Verified intents close out; failed verifications spawn new evidence
The Build Queue is the hinge between specifying and building. It's also where AI coding agents get clean handoff packages — a spec is agent-ready precisely because the Build Queue has assembled it that way.
Build Queue vs. Linear or Jira
The Build Queue is upstream of your engineering tracker. Linear and Jira track execution; the Build Queue tracks intent. The export bridges them.
You can use Pathmode without Linear — the Build Queue handles status tracking standalone. For most teams, the Build Queue exists to feed Linear or Jira cleanly, with one-click export instead of copy-paste.