Wicked Garden Jam

Brainstorming Skill

Generate diverse perspectives through structured focus group sessions. This is the single entry point for the jam domain — route the user's request to one of the sub-actions below.

Routing

| Sub-action | When | How it runs | |------------|------|-------------| | quick | Gut-check, rapid exploration (~60s) | Inline — apply refs/quick.md directly | | brainstorm | Important decisions, complex problems | Fork → wicked-garden-jam-brainstorm-facilitator | | council | Defined options needing a rigid verdict | Fork → wicked-garden-jam-council | | revisit | Record the outcome of a past decision | Inline — follow refs/revisit.md |

> Progression: quick (60s gut-check, ephemeral) → brainstorm (full > session with evidence + decision storage) → council (structured verdict > with external LLMs, final step). Key distinction: quick = ideation, > brainstorm = free-form exploration, council = rigid evaluation of > defined options.

Quick-Start

# Fast gut-check (ephemeral, ~60s)
jam quick "Should we use feature flags or config files here?"

# Full session with evidence and decision storage
jam brainstorm "Architecture approach for the new event bus"

# High-stakes council with external LLM challenge
jam council "Go/no-go on the v9 storage migration" --options "go, no-go"

# Record how a past decision worked out
jam revisit "event bus architecture"

Sub-action: quick

Args: ``

Quick 60-second exploration with 4 personas and 1 round. Run it inline — no dispatch:

1. Read("${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/jam/refs/quick.md") — the single-pass

rubric: 4 personas, 1 forced round, synthesis format (Key Insights / Action Items / Open Questions), hard constraints (no storage, no multi-AI, ≤200 words).

1. Apply the rubric directly to the topic. Do NOT run additional rounds. Do NOT store.

Sub-action: brainstorm

Args: [--personas list] [--rounds n] [--converge fast]

Full brainstorm with evidence-backed perspectives. The facilitator gathers evidence from the ecosystem (past decisions, code context, brainstorm outcomes) before assembling personas, so they argue from data — not just opinions. After synthesis, a structured decision record is automatically stored via the wicked-garden-mem skill for organizational memory.

Convergence modes (pass through as convergence_mode):

• normal (default): Run all requested rounds (2-3), then synthesize.
• fast (--converge fast): After each round, assess whether there is

enough signal to synthesize; skip remaining rounds when personas converge.

Dispatch to the forked facilitator skill (it owns the convergence checks, native-task tracking, transcript storage, and bus events):

Skill(skill="wicked-garden-jam-brainstorm-facilitator",
      args="Run a full brainstorm session on: {topic}. Options: {personas}, {rounds}, convergence_mode={converge|'normal'}.")

Sub-action: council

Args: --options "A, B, C" [--criteria "perf, cost, risk"]

Structured evaluation tool that uses real external LLM CLIs — registry-driven (20+ CLIs: Codex, Gemini, Copilot, OpenCode, Pi, Aider, Goose, Amp, Droid, …; see scripts/jam/agentic_cli_registry.py) — to get genuinely independent model perspectives. Installed CLIs are detected AND usability-probed via scripts/jam/detect_clis.py --probe (auth-revoked / unconfigured / daemon-down CLIs are excluded). When fewer than 2 usable external CLIs are present, council seats are filled with forked subagent seats so deliberation always happens. Unlike brainstorm (free-form creative exploration), council is a rigid evaluation tool for when you have defined options and need a verdict.

Natural workflow: brainstorm → identify candidates → council → decide

Dispatch to the forked council skill:

Skill(skill="wicked-garden-jam-council",
      args="Run a council evaluation on: {topic}. Options: {options}. Criteria: {criteria}.")

After the fork returns: read ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/jam/refs/council-verdict.md — it holds the caller-side heuristics for acting on the verdict (when to proceed, when to surface raw votes and pause for human adjudication, hard-gate archetype rules) and the raw_votes output envelope contract (consensus.py::build_council_output, WG_COUNCIL_OUTPUT=both|synth|raw).

Sub-action: revisit

Args: ``

Revisit a past brainstorm decision to record whether it was validated, invalidated, or modified. Light workflow — run it inline, no fork:

1. Read("${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/jam/refs/revisit.md") — the 5-step

workflow: recall the decision via the wicked-garden-mem skill, display the decision summary, ask validated/invalidated/modified, store the outcome (about tags jam,outcome), report. Degrades gracefully when the memory layer is absent.

1. Follow it step by step, waiting for the user's outcome answer in step 3.

Workers (forked skills)

• skills/jam-brainstorm-facilitator/SKILL.md — multi-round, evidence gathering, transcript storage, decision record
• skills/jam-council/SKILL.md — registry-driven multi-model council with isolation-enforced parallel dispatch

(jam quick runs inline via refs/quick.md — the former quick-facilitator agent was retired; the ref is the sole, up-to-date rubric.)

References

• refs/quick.md — the single-pass quick-jam rubric (personas, round, synthesis shape, hard constraints)
• refs/revisit.md — the decision-outcome revisit workflow
• refs/council-verdict.md — caller-side verdict heuristics + raw_votes output contract
• refs/facilitation-patterns.md — persona archetype pool, session length guidance, anti-patterns
• refs/synthesis-patterns.md — synthesis structure, quality checklist, decision record format

Source & license

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

• Author: mikeparcewski
• Source: mikeparcewski/wicked-garden
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://wg.wickedagile.com/

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