Goals types

Quick clarification on the vocabulary first — Paperclip's goal levels are company, team, agent, and task. There isn't a project level; projects are a separate concept that links up to one or more goals (a project can be linked to multiple goals, and every issue in that project inherits the link). So the question becomes "at which level does this outcome belong?"

Here's how I think about each, with examples:

company — long-lived, rarely changes, the "why we exist" layer. One or two of these is plenty. "Become the default home-charging readiness check in NL." "Reach $20k MRR with the SaaS arm by end of year."

team — outcome for a workstream that spans multiple projects, but isn't the whole company. Use this when you have several projects that should clearly roll up together. "Cut customer-support response time below 4h." (rolls up: helpdesk project, FAQ rewrite project, triage routine project) "Ship a credible public beta." (rolls up: core product, billing, launch plan)

agent — outcome owned by a single agent, usually the "what does success look like for this role" anchor. Set ownerAgentId so it's clearly theirs. CEO agent: "Keep the company within budget while hitting quarterly company goals." CMO agent: "Grow qualified email signups by 25% this quarter."

task — narrow, often short-lived, attached to one body of work. This is the default level if you omit it on create. Use sparingly — most "task-level" outcomes are better expressed as the project description. "Reduce checkout drop-off on mobile to under 30%." "Get one paying customer for the new tier."

Two heuristics that help me pick:

If issues for it would span multiple projects, it's at least a team goal. If only one agent is meaningfully accountable, make it an agent goal and set the owner. If it's the reason the company exists, make it company.

And remember the chain: Goal → Project → Issue → Workspace → Agent run. Issues attach to goals only via their project, so reach for goals when you want a direction, and projects when you want a place to put work.

Thank you for a good explanation of the goals. 🙏

So helpful.