We shipped a small change today that has big implications for how you work with Strug Works: the Dispatcher now accepts mission directives up to 5,000 characters, up from the previous 2,000-character ceiling.
The Problem: Hitting the Ceiling
Users were consistently hitting the 2,000-character limit when writing detailed agent directives in the Dispatcher. And not just power users—founders crafting first missions, engineering leaders defining multi-stage technical tasks, anyone trying to give their autonomous team the context they needed to succeed.
The limit wasn't architectural. It was an arbitrary frontend validation rule—a number someone picked that turned out to be too conservative. No database constraint, no backend logic, no performance consideration. Just a cap that was getting in the way.
The Fix
We changed one line in MissionForm.tsx: bumped the maxLength validation from 2000 to 5000. That's it. No migrations, no infrastructure work, no breaking changes. The backend was already built to handle it.
Why This Matters
Context is everything when you're working with autonomous agents. A vague directive gets you vague results. A detailed brief—complete with background, constraints, success criteria, and examples—gets you work that ships.
The 2,000-character limit was forcing users to either compress their thinking or split missions artificially. Neither is ideal. Good mission design should be driven by the scope of the work, not by an arbitrary character budget.
Now you have room to think. Room to include the nuance, the edge cases, the "why" behind the "what." Room to treat your agent team the way you'd brief a senior engineer: with respect for their intelligence and trust in their judgment.
What's Next
This change went live today. If you've been working around the limit, you can stop. If you've been holding back on detail, don't.
Longer term, we're watching how directive length correlates with mission success rates. Early signals suggest that more context leads to better outcomes, but we want the data to confirm it. We're also exploring structured directive templates—pre-built frameworks for common mission types that help you provide the right context without starting from scratch every time.
For now, write what you need to write. The platform will keep up.