Launching Munder Difflin v0.2.8: Shareable Hires

ok so picture this. you’ve got a whole floor of pixel coworkers — Claude Code agents, Antigravity (Gemini) workers, Codex CLIs — all run by Michael, the GOD orchestrator who routes work like a slightly unhinged regional manager. it’s great. but here’s the part nobody tells you about a fresh, empty office:

the first hire is the hard one.

a blank floor is intimidating. what model? what provider? what flags? what should this thing’s job even be? for a newcomer, that’s a lot of staring at an empty Add-Agent dialog before anything fun happens. you basically have to know how to write an orchestrator brief before you can watch a single agent do a single thing.

v0.2.8 fixes the cold start. meet Shareable Hires.

what’s a “hire”? #

a hire is a tiny, portable JSON manifest — format id munder-difflin/hire@1 — that captures a fully role-configured agent. not just “an agent,” but a coworker with a job already figured out:

• 🏷️ a name and an avatar/sprite (yes, the little pixel face)
• 🤖 a provider — Claude Code, Antigravity, or Codex
• 🧠 a model and the command flags it should run with
• 🎯 a goal / role description — what this coworker is actually here to do
• 🏆 capability tags — what it’s good at, so it’s filterable
• 📊 a token budget — so it can’t quietly torch your bill

think of it as a job description you can hand to anyone’s office. someone figured out a great “PR reviewer” setup once? they export it as a hire, you drop it into your floor, and now you’ve got that exact coworker — without reverse-engineering anyone’s prompt.

the neat trick: a manifest maps 1:1 onto what the Add-Agent modal already sends. it’s not a new system bolted on the side — it’s just a portable snapshot of the per-agent config you’ve always had. “hire Pam” is a way easier first step than writing an orchestrator prompt from a cold start.

two ways to hire, one pipeline #

there are two front doors, but they both end at the same place: a modal you review and a spawn button you press.

🔗 the deep link #

click a munderdifflin://hire?src=<https-url> link — say, from the gallery — and the app does the legwork: it fetches the manifest, validates it, and pops open the Add-Agent modal pre-filled with everything that hire describes. one click from “ooh, that’s a nice role” to “let me look this over.”

📁 the file import #

prefer files? there’s an import hire… button right inside the Add-Agent modal. point it at a local .hire.json file and it reads it in. same destination: the modal, pre-filled.

both paths converge. link or file, you land in the same review screen.

the part that matters: import never spawns anything #

read this twice, because it’s the whole trust promise:

importing a hire does not start an agent. ever.

all it does is pre-fill the modal — and it slaps an explicit “imported” banner on it so you’re never confused about where these values came from. then you read every field. you check the goal. you eyeball the provider and the budget. and then you click spawn. yourself. on purpose.

a hire you got off the internet can’t run itself. the human is always the trigger. that’s not a setting you can flip off; it’s how the feature is built. it’s the difference between “here’s a job description, want to hire this person?” and “this résumé is now a manager.” we are firmly the former.

🔒 on the security of it: a manifest is treated as untrusted input — there’s no executable field, no auto-spawn, and the fetch is validated and bounded. that’s the short version. we wrote a whole post on the trust model so this one can stay fun — go read the hire manifest security deep-dive if you want the bolts and the threat model.

The Hiring Fair 🎪 #

ok, the fun part. all of this would be a neat plumbing feature with nothing to plug into — so we built the thing to plug into.

The Hiring Fair is a community gallery at munderdiffl.in/hires. static, no login, no account. just a wall of ready-made coworkers you can hire in one click. and because the floor looks like The Office, of course the cast showed up to apply:

• 📝 Pam writes the docs (the README nobody wants to write? Pam wants to write it.)
• 🥋 Dwight enforces QA. Dwight does not negotiate with bugs. FACT.
• 🔍 Jim reviews your PRs (calm, reasonable, occasionally pranks the diff)
• 🕵️ Creed audits security (look, who better to think like an attacker)
• 💰 Angela audits the office’s own token spend — she runs the numbers on your other agents and judges them for it. perfect casting.
• 🗄️ Stanley does the migrations nobody else will touch. he’s not thrilled. he does them anyway.

each card has a Claude Code / Antigravity / Codex toggle and function filters — the same ones from the main landing page, so it all feels like one place. pick the provider you actually have installed, filter by what you need, then hit the ⚡hire button.

the loop is dead simple:

browse → click ⚡hire → review → spawn.

that’s it. that’s the whole onboarding. instead of “here’s an empty floor, good luck,” it’s “here’s Pam, want her to write your docs? yes? she’s at her desk now.”

why this is secretly a growth thing #

here’s the bit we’re genuinely excited about. the hardest moment in any tool like this is the first five minutes. an empty office asks too much of a newcomer.

a hire collapses that. somebody who already runs a great floor can package up their best role and share the link. the recipient clicks it, reviews it, spawns it — and now they’ve got a working agent on their first try, before they’ve learned a single thing about orchestrator prompts. then they tweak it, build their own great role, and share that.

that’s a community growth loop: roles people actually use, shared as one-click links, each one a doorway into the floor that doesn’t start with a blank page. The Hiring Fair is the marketplace; the hire manifest is the currency. and none of it costs you an API key — hires drive the CLIs and subscriptions you already pay for.

everything from 0.2.7 is still in the box #

Shareable Hires is purely additive. nothing got taken away. v0.2.8 includes everything from v0.2.7 and earlier:

• 🎙️ voice dictation — talk to your floor
• 🕸️ the Knowledge Graph — the office remembers how things connect
• 🪟 multi-window floors — spread the office across monitors
• ✍️ the rich composer — attachments + a taller, friendlier input
• ⏯️ session resume — pick a long-running session back up where it left off

plus the multi-provider parity (Claude Code + Antigravity + Codex, no second-class citizens), shared memory, the inbox/outbox mailbox, schedules, token budgets, close-the-lid overnight runs, and Slack/webhook triggers. the floor you already love, now with a front door for new coworkers.

get v0.2.8 #

Munder Difflin is free, open source, and local-first on macOS, Windows, and Linux. no account, no cloud — your machine, your subscriptions, your floor.

Download v0.2.8, then head over to The Hiring Fair, find a coworker, and hit ⚡hire. review the modal. spawn it. watch Pam get to work.

want the why-it’s-built-this-way story? read the concept companion on shareable agent roles. want the trust model and threat surface in detail? that’s the hire manifest security deep-dive. curious how we even ended up with a Dwight in the first place? the Office parody behind Munder Difflin explains the casting. and if you missed the multi-provider launch, v0.2.4 is right here.

full release notes live in the CHANGELOG.

that’s it. go hire someone. (Dwight is already volunteering.)

FAQ

What's new in Munder Difflin v0.2.8?

The headline is Shareable Hires. A hire is a portable JSON manifest (format id munder-difflin/hire@1) that captures a fully role-configured agent — name, avatar, provider, model, command flags, a goal, capability tags, and a token budget. You can share it as a link or a file, and the recipient gets the Add-Agent modal pre-filled, ready to review and spawn. It ships alongside a community gallery called The Hiring Fair at munderdiffl.in/hires.

What exactly is a 'hire'?

Think of it as a job description for an AI coworker. It's a single JSON manifest that describes a role-configured agent: which provider runs it (Claude Code, Antigravity, or Codex), the model, the command flags, a goal/role description, capability tags, and a token budget. Hand it to anyone's office and they can spin up that exact role.

Does importing a hire automatically run an agent?

No — and this is the whole point. Importing a hire (by link or by file) only pre-fills the Add-Agent modal, with an explicit 'imported' banner. Nothing spawns until you review every field and click spawn yourself. A hire you got from the internet can't run itself. The human is always the trigger.

What is The Hiring Fair?

It's a community gallery at munderdiffl.in/hires — static, no login. It's full of ready-made roles from the cast: Pam writes docs, Dwight enforces QA, Jim reviews PRs, Creed audits security, Angela audits the office's own token spend, and Stanley does the migrations nobody wants. Each card has a Claude Code / Antigravity / Codex toggle and function filters. Browse, click the ⚡hire button, review, spawn.

How are the two ways to hire different?

There are two front doors, one pipeline. A deep link (munderdifflin://hire?src=<https-url>) makes the app fetch and validate a manifest, then open the Add-Agent modal pre-filled — that's what the gallery's ⚡hire button uses. A file import is the 'import hire…' button in the Add-Agent modal, which reads a local .hire.json file. Both end at the same review-and-spawn step.

Is it safe to import a hire from someone else?

A manifest is treated as untrusted input: there's no executable field, no auto-spawn, and the fetch is validated and bounded. It can only pre-fill a form you review by hand. We go deep on the trust model in a separate post — see the hire manifest security deep-dive.

Do I still get everything from v0.2.7?

Yes. v0.2.8 includes everything from v0.2.7 (voice dictation, the Knowledge Graph, multi-window floors, the rich composer, session resume) and earlier. Shareable Hires is purely additive.

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