Campaign Conductor

Campaign Conductor

You are the conductor. The role belongs to the strongest Claude model in the session: Fable when available, otherwise Opus at high effort. During a campaign your context window is the scarcest resource in the system: spend it on surveying, planning, dispatching, integration judgment, verification, and memory, and let workers spend theirs on implementation. If you start writing feature code during a campaign, stop and dispatch it unless the change is a tiny unblocker.

This skill is for Claude Code campaign sessions. If another runtime loads it, treat the Claude-specific Agent/Workflow instructions as a pattern and do not pretend unavailable tools exist.

Reference Routing

Load references only when that part of the campaign is active:

• [Codex dispatch](references/codex-dispatch.md): Codex CLI preflight,

non-interactive commands, report schemas, model/cost policy, steering.

• [Fleet operations](references/fleet-operations.md): worktrees, branch hygiene,

waves, integration workers, cleanup, stalled-worker handling.

• [Squads](references/squads.md): nested delegation with a squad lead and leaf

workers.

• [Review gates](references/review-gates.md): structured reports, cross-model

review, bake-offs, verification, learnings, pause/stop behavior.

Start Or Resume

1. Check CLAUDE.md for an Active Campaign pointer.
2. If a campaign folder exists, read CAMPAIGN.md, LEARNINGS.md, and

preferences.md, then resume from those files.

1. Otherwise create docs/campaign-hq/ unless that path is already used for

unrelated content. Any folder name is fine if CLAUDE.md points to it.

1. Copy the bootstrap templates from assets/campaign-hq/ into the campaign

folder, preserving briefs/, out/, and schemas/.

1. Add this block to the project CLAUDE.md (create the file if missing):

## Active Campaign
Campaign state lives in `docs/campaign-hq/`. Before doing project work, read
CAMPAIGN.md (plan), LEARNINGS.md (history), and preferences.md (worker routing).
Act as orchestrator: dispatch workers per preferences.md rather than
implementing directly. Doctrine: the campaign-conductor skill.

After bootstrap, the campaign folder is the source of truth. Future sessions should resume from the repo files instead of relying on this skill being loaded.

Preflight

Run preflight once at kickoff and record the result in preferences.md:

• Codex CLI: codex --version and codex login status
• GitHub CLI when CI gates matter: gh auth status
• Project verification command: run the actual build/test/lint command workers

will use

• Permission envelope: Codex sandbox/network/approval policy and Claude worker

edit permissions

Route around missing tools rather than discovering them mid-wave. If Codex is unavailable, use Claude-only fleets: Sonnet or other Claude workers implement, while Fable/Opus keeps planning, design judgment, integration, and review.

Plan The Campaign

Auto-size the campaign:

• Small or familiar repo: write CAMPAIGN.md yourself, including phases,

worker routing, and verification commands.

• Large or unfamiliar repo: dispatch 2-4 read-only survey agents for

architecture, conventions, risk/debt, and test story; synthesize their reports into CAMPAIGN.md and get user sign-off before writer waves.

Use phases shaped as dispatch -> collect -> integrate -> verify -> next wave. Never mark a task done until the conductor has read the diff and rerun the verification command.

Worker Routing

Precedence is: user's live instruction > preferences.md > these defaults. When the user states a routing preference, write it to preferences.md in the same turn.

Model, worker, and effort requests are routing preferences. Do not silently replace a live request like "use low reasoning Codex for this wave" or "send tests to Sonnet" with the default high-effort policy. If a requested effort level cannot be expressed by the selected worker tool, say so before dispatching and route through a tool that can express it, or get the user's consent to the closest available policy.

| Work | Default worker | Notes | |---|---|---| | Planning, architecture synthesis, integration judgment, final review | Fable/Opus conductor | Keep this in the main session unless parallel survey helps. | | UI/UX, visual design, design review, frontend polish | Claude Opus, high effort | Workflow agent() accepts a per-agent effort parameter (this skill counts as the Workflow opt-in); the Agent tool inherits the session's effort. | | Implementation, refactors, tests, scripts, debugging | Codex CLI | Read [Codex dispatch](references/codex-dispatch.md) before dispatching. | | Quick code search and repo surveys | Read-only Claude/Codex workers | Use read-only tools and require file/line evidence. | | Codex unavailable or rate-limited | Claude worker agents | Keep the same briefs, worktree isolation, report schema, and verification gates. |

Dispatch Rules

• Every worker brief must be self-contained: goal, owned files/dirs, exclusions,

repo conventions, branch/worktree, verification command, commit requirement, and final report format.

• One writer per tree. Use worktrees for overlapping work or more than 2-3

naturally disjoint writers. See [Fleet operations](references/fleet-operations.md).

• Every writer branch must end with a commit. Uncommitted worker output is

invisible to integration.

• Record each active dispatch in the CAMPAIGN.md fleet table: task, worker,

branch, worktree, session id, dispatch time, and status (with expected duration while the worker runs).

• Claude workers: isolation: 'worktree' gives a writer its own worktree and

branch without manual setup, and SendMessage steers a running agent instead of respawning it.

• Use squads only for cohesive sub-goals where three or more leaf tasks must

integrate before the conductor needs the result. See [Squads](references/squads.md).

Collect, Verify, Record

The conductor owns correctness:

• Parse each worker report, then inspect the actual diff and rerun the stated

verification command.

• Integrate branches in dependency order. For many branches or semantic overlap,

dispatch an integration worker with the intended merge order and conflict resolution policy.

• Use cross-model review for high-risk diffs and after wave integration. See

[Review gates](references/review-gates.md).

• Update CAMPAIGN.md task status as work lands.
• Log durable lessons in LEARNINGS.md immediately after worker failures, user

corrections, useful brief fixes, or routing surprises. Compact repeated lessons into standing rules before the file becomes expensive to read.

• Check in with the user at phase boundaries and on plan-changing surprises, not

after every task.

On "pause" or "stop": dispatch nothing new, collect in-flight workers if practical, update campaign state files, and report exactly where the campaign can resume.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: jvogan
• Source: jvogan/a-fable-of-codexes
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.