TL;DR: FCoP is a ~76-line .mdc rule that lets multiple Cursor agents collaborate without a database, message queue, or custom server — they pass work by renaming files in a shared folder. Filename = routing. Directory = status. Content = payload. MIT, zero infrastructure.
Drop spec/codeflow-core.mdc from the repo into your project’s .cursor/rules/, make docs/agents/{tasks,reports,issues,log}/, open N Cursor chats and tell each: “You are {ROLE}. Only read *-to-{ROLE}*.md.” That’s the whole setup.
The reason I’m posting this here rather than on HN is that Cursor is the ideal host for FCoP — .mdc rules are the protocol delivery mechanism, multiple chats on the same project = an instant multi-agent team, and the shared folder shows up in your file tree so you can literally watch agents talk to each other in real time.
The interesting bit: on a fresh PC install we booted 4 agents (PM/DEV/QA/OPS) and let them run. Within 48 hours they invented 6 coordination patterns we never wrote — broadcast addressing (to-TEAM), anonymous role slots (to-assignee.{slot}), subtask batch folders, self-explaining archive READMEs, traceability frontmatter, standing dashboards/sprint docs. All of them showed up as new filenames. Zero code changes required. I’ve since folded the best ones back into the spec. The full 5000-word field report lives in the repo at essays/when-ai-organizes-its-own-work.en.md — all agent-generated snippets are verbatim.
I posted the full runtime earlier on this forum (search for “Cursor AI Automated Team: 4-role autonomous AI dev team”); this post is about the protocol I pulled out of it so other people can implement it differently. Shoutout to @vance’s Coware post (also in this board) — similar problem, different angle (shared specs vs. filename-as-routing). Curious where we overlap.
Everything in one repo, MIT — find it on GitHub under joinwell52-AI/FCoP (I’ll add the direct link in a reply right after posting).
Spec, 60-second primer (bilingual), the field report, a runnable workspace example, and a Windows .fcop file-association helper. Happy to answer anything — especially if your agents invent something mine didn’t. That’s the whole point.