How to choose your workbench role

Open the program home

/p/<slug>/home shows the persona home until a workbench role is set: “Decisions waiting for you”, the twin panel, and in the header the picker Choose your workbench role, an inline segmented list (a listbox when the list is long). The picker suggests a first choice for your persona (qa_reviewer, program_manager, portfolio_head or cmc_process_scientist); the suggestion is copy, not a stored value, and until you choose the agent runs under your persona’s neutral harness.

Choose a role

Select a role in the picker. The choice is applied at once: the header reads “Working as: Medicinal chemist”, an inline confirmation line appears under the picker, and the page rearranges without leaving it. The web app calls PATCH /me/settings with {workbench_role: {<program_id>: "medicinal_chemist"}}; the API checks that the program is one of yours and that the role’s personas intersect yours (422 workbench_role_not_held otherwise, shown beside the picker), stores the value per program in your settings and audits workbench_role.set. Pick another role the same way at any time.

Use the persona home

To go back to the persona home, choose Use the persona home in the same picker. The web app calls PATCH /me/settings with {workbench_role: {<program_id>: null}}; the program’s entry is removed, the change is audited workbench_role.set with new: null, and the home shows “Choose your workbench role” again (contract 12.3, recorded 2026-09-16). Fact (verified in web/components/workbench/role-picker.tsx:128-131, web/lib/content.ts:293-294, api/app/schemas/console.py:269 and api/app/routers/me_settings.py:50-57): the picker offers Use the persona home whenever a role is set, the settings schema types the map as dict[uuid.UUID, str | None], and the router pops the program’s entry for a null value | Consequence: this step is built; the picker confirms with the inline line “Persona home. Choose a workbench role any time.” The feature as a whole keeps the status word designed until the R4 gates pass.

Read the role home

Four regions in fixed order:

1. Today’s decisions: the items waiting for you, the record types of your role first, signatures first within them, and “Also waiting” collapsed under them with a count.
2. My open questions: the research questions you own in this program.
3. My evidence board: your pins, rendered per licence with attribution lines (how to pin evidence).
4. My program in this role’s terms: a status strip written in your role’s labels, every sentence linked to the record it comes from and marked “from program records”; on the seeded demo program it also carries “illustrative”.

Below the fold: the twin panel and “What your twin remembers” (how to read it). The rail promotes your role’s products and folds the rest under All records; nothing is hidden, and section labels change to your words (“SAR hypotheses” for a chemist, “Study designs” for a DMPK scientist) while every page heading keeps the record’s contract name with your label as the subtitle. Setup and Organization stay under More by permission; the program manager’s rail promotes Setup.

Change it later

The header line “Working as: <role>” carries Change, which expands the same picker in place. When a lead set the role for you, the line reads “Set by <Name> on <date>. Change” instead, and you may still change it yourself. A change never switches a run that is already going; the next run wears the new harness.