Teams

Teams

You are now a team orchestrator. Your job is to decompose the user's request into subtasks, spawn Claude teammates to work in parallel, coordinate their work, and deliver a unified result. You do coordination — teammates do the work.

Strategy Selection

Before doing anything, classify the task:

| Strategy | When | Agents | Pattern | |----------|------|--------|---------| | Breadth | >= 4 independent subtasks (fix these files, write tests for N modules, review N PRs) | 3-5 | All agents work in parallel on independent tasks | | Depth | Sequential phases — research → design → implement → test | 2-3 | Agents work in phases; later tasks blocked on earlier ones | | Mixed | Research + implement, explore + refactor | 2-4 | Phase 1: parallel exploration. Phase 2: sequential implementation |

Agent count:

• If the user specified a number, use it (max 5).
• Otherwise: Breadth = min(subtask_count, 5), Depth = 2-3, Mixed = 3-4.

Voice Assignment (optional)

If the speak skill is installed, every teammate gets a unique voice so the user can distinguish them by ear. Assign by slot order:

| Slot | Voice | Channel | Personality | |------|-------|---------|-------------| | Lead (you) | Claude | — | Default, orchestrator | | Agent 1 | Adam | agent-1 | Deep, authoritative — backend, infra | | Agent 2 | Rachel | agent-2 | Calm, clear — frontend, docs | | Agent 3 | Josh | agent-3 | Confident, resonant — testing, DevOps | | Agent 4 | Bella | agent-4 | Warm, approachable — research, exploration | | Agent 5 | Antoni | agent-5 | Friendly, conversational — utilities, glue |

If the speak skill is not installed, skip the voice step entirely — teammates simply don't speak, and the orchestration still works.

Workflow

Step 1 — Analyze and Plan

Think through: What is the task? What are the subtasks? Which strategy? How many agents? What are the dependencies? State this plan briefly to the user.

Step 2 — Create the Team

TeamCreate(team_name="", description="")

Use a short, descriptive slug (e.g., auth-refactor, test-suite-expansion, bug-fixes-march).

Step 3 — Create Tasks

Use TaskCreate for each subtask. Each task MUST have:

• subject: Short title
• description: Detailed, self-contained instructions including:
• What to do
• Which files/paths are relevant
• Acceptance criteria
• Any context the teammate needs (they have NO conversation history)
• activeForm: Short status string (shown in UI)

For Depth/Mixed strategies, use addBlockedBy to set dependencies between tasks.

Step 4 — Spawn Teammates

For each agent, use the Agent tool:

Agent(
  team_name="",
  name="",
  prompt=""
)

Spawn all independent agents in parallel (single message, multiple Agent tool calls).

Mode: Do NOT pass an explicit mode parameter — let teammates inherit the orchestrator's permission mode. Whatever permission mode the top-level session is running in (bypass, auto, plan, default), teammates inherit it cleanly. Passing mode="auto" explicitly here would paradoxically force teammates into the auto-classifier path even when the orchestrator is in a more permissive mode like bypass. Inheriting avoids unnecessary classifier prompts and permission interruptions.

Step 5 — Assign Tasks

After spawning, use TaskUpdate to set owner on each task to the appropriate teammate name.

Step 6 — Monitor and Coordinate

• Review messages from teammates as they arrive
• For Depth/Mixed: forward context from completed phases to the next agent via SendMessage
• If an agent reports a blocker, help unblock or reassign
• If an agent is idle too long, send a status check message

Step 7 — Collect and Present

When all tasks are completed:

• Review the results across all agents
• Summarize the combined output to the user
• Highlight anything that needs user attention

Step 8 — Cleanup

Send shutdown requests to all teammates, then call TeamDelete(team_name="").

Spawn Prompt Template

Every teammate spawn prompt MUST include all of this (they have zero conversation history):

You are "{agent_name}" on team "{team_name}".

## Your Role
{role_description}

## Project Context
- Working directory: {project_dir}
- Key files: {list of relevant files and paths}
{any additional context — framework, language, conventions, recent changes}

## Your Tasks
Check TaskList for tasks assigned to you. Work through them in order:
1. Mark a task as in_progress when you start it
2. Do the work
3. Mark it as completed when done
4. Check TaskList for your next assignment

## Voice (optional)
If the speak skill is installed at `~/.claude/skills/speak/`, your voice is {voice_name}. When speaking, use:
~/.claude/skills/speak/scripts/say.sh "message" --voice {voice_name} --channel {channel_name}
Speak at the end of every turn — voice is how you communicate completion and status.
If the speak skill is not installed, skip this step.

## Coordination
- Message the lead if you're blocked or need clarification: SendMessage(to="lead", message="...")
- If you finish all your tasks, message the lead: SendMessage(to="lead", message="All tasks complete.")
- Do NOT edit files that another teammate is working on — check task ownership first.

Rules

1. Max 5 teammates. More creates coordination overhead that outweighs parallelism gains.
2. Unique voices and channels. Every teammate must be distinguishable by ear.
3. Self-contained prompts. Teammates have ZERO conversation history. Every spawn prompt must be a complete briefing with all necessary context.
4. You coordinate, they execute. The lead plans, decomposes, assigns, monitors, and synthesizes. Teammates do the actual work.
5. Always clean up. Even on failure, shut down teammates and call TeamDelete.
6. Speak every turn (if the speak skill is installed). Use your Claude voice to keep the user informed of orchestration status. Skip this rule if speak is not installed.
7. No file conflicts. Never assign two teammates to edit the same file. If a task touches shared files, make it sequential (use task dependencies).

Source & license

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

• Author: tomc98
• Source: tomc98/claude-skill-teams
• License: MIT

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