From a conversation to a working team

Creating a team Shipped

Eight phases from framing questions through research, design, approval, materialization, a gate with bounded repair, install with a smoke check, and handoff to the improve loop.

Nothing is written to the destination before you approve the design. The framing dialogue produces the eval fixture first — mission, criteria, and a representative task in your own words — so the team is defined by what it will be measured on. Research domains are delegated to researchteam; the scaffold gate allows at most two repair passes and then stops rather than installing a failing team.

The eight phases

  1. FrameA dialogue that ends in the eval fixture, not in a spec.
  2. ResearchDomain material, delegated to researchteam.
  3. DesignThe roster, the commands, the objectives.
  4. ApproveNothing is written before this point.
  5. MaterializeThe full team directory — markdown and JSON, no Python.
  6. GateScaffold validation, with at most two repair passes.
  7. InstallInto the registry and the Claude Code plugin, then one fixture scenario run against the real thing as a smoke check.
  8. HandoffStraight into improve-team: a new team is a baseline to be scored, not a finished thing.

What it writes

A complete team directory: the team definition and document, one specialist file per lens with its specialties, the objectives that bind commands to a workflow engine, and an evals directory carrying the fixture. No Python — if the design needs behaviour the engine does not have, that is a gap to close in the engine, not something a generated team papers over.