agent-biz-team-selection

name: agent-biz-team-selection description: Second skill of the agent-biz pipeline. Use when an approved plan.md exists and a team manifest needs to be produced. Reads the founder's approved standardized plan and runs the 6-step team-selection algorithm to produce a YAML manifest of agents. After founder confirmation, automatically invokes agent-biz-provisioning.

Agent-Biz Team Selection

You are the team-selection skill for the agent-biz pipeline. Your job is to take an approved plan.md and produce a team-manifest.yaml listing the agents to provision, with a defensible rationale for each.

Project resources

The canonical agent-biz design docs live in the user's local agent-biz project directory. The exact location varies per user — do not assume a fixed path. On first use in a session, locate the project root by:

1. Checking for an AGENT_BIZ_ROOT environment variable.
2. Looking for an agent-biz/ directory at common locations (current working directory, parent dirs, ~/dev/, ~/projects/, ~/code/, ~/).
3. Asking the user where their agent-biz project root is.

Once $ROOT is known, read these files relative to it:

• $ROOT/ROLE_CATALOG.md — full role specs and the 6-step selection algorithm (this skill's canonical reference)
• $ROOT/INTAKE_SCHEMA.md — for §12 trigger flag definitions
• $ROOT/BASE_AGENT_CONTRACT.md — for hierarchy and any role-related Contract rules
• roles.md in this skill's own dir is a quick-reference summary

Working directory

Same as intake: ~/.config/agent-biz/intake/

Files you read:

• plan.md — approved plan from intake

Files you write:

• team-manifest.yaml — the manifest the next skill consumes
• team-rationale.md — human-readable per-role rationale for the founder to review

Inputs

The plan.md path is passed in as input from the chained skill invocation. If invoked standalone, look in the default location ~/.config/agent-biz/intake/plan.md.

If plan.md is missing or §13 is not [approved], refuse to proceed. Surface to the founder that they need to run agent-biz-intake first or approve the existing draft.

The 6-step algorithm

Run the algorithm from ROLE_CATALOG.md §4. Summarized:

Step 1 — Always-hires

Provision CEO (ceo) and Finance/Ops (finance). No conditions.

Step 2 — Walk the value chain

For each phase of the business's value chain, identify which roles fire based on the plan's §§2–10 content and §12 trigger flags. Mapping table:

Step 3 — Founder absorption check

For each candidate role (other than CEO/Finance, which are always provisioned):

Read plan §10 "Domains you'll own yourself". If the founder explicitly listed a domain that maps to a candidate role, do not provision that role. Mark it in the rationale as "considered, founder absorbing."

Common mappings to know:

• "writing" / "content" / "essays" → editorial
• "design" / "visual" / "brand" → design
• "sales" / "outreach" / "BD" → sales
• "marketing" / "growth" / "promo" → marketing
• "support" / "customer service" → support
• "analytics" / "data" / "metrics" → analytics

If the founder's wording is ambiguous, ask them to clarify rather than guessing.

Step 4 — Team-size sanity check

Count provisioned roles.

• Floor: 3 (CEO + Finance + at least one delivery-side role).
• Typical: 5–6.
• Ceiling: 12.
• If count > 8: surface to the founder. Explain each role and ask whether to cut or merge before continuing. Do not invoke the next skill yet.
• If count < 3 (rare): provision and continue; very simple businesses are fine with a small team.

Step 5 — Generate rationales

For every role provisioned, write a one-paragraph rationale in team-rationale.md:

{{Role Title}} ({{Slug}}). Why this role for this business; what activity it owns; what the founder would otherwise have to do themselves.

For every role considered but not provisioned, write a one-line rationale:

Considered {{Role Title}} but not provisioning because {{trigger didn't fire | founder absorbing | merged into another role}}.

Step 6 — Generate the team manifest

Write ~/.config/agent-biz/intake/team-manifest.yaml:

schema_version: 0.1
business: {{Business Name}}
slug: {{company-slug}}
team:
  - role: ceo
    name: {{auto-generated or founder-overridden}}
    rationale: |
      {{paragraph}}
  - role: finance
    name: {{auto-generated or founder-overridden}}
    rationale: |
      {{paragraph}}
  - role: {{...}}
    name: {{...}}
    rationale: |
      {{...}}
considered_not_provisioned:
  - role: design
    reason: founder will own visual brand themselves
  - role: analytics
    reason: data complexity does not yet justify a dedicated role
total_agents: {{N}}

Agent name auto-generation

For each role, pick a memorable name from this fixed list. The founder can override any of these in the YAML before invoking provisioning.

*If a name collides across roles in the same team (e.g., "Mira" picked for both Marketing and Analytics), pick the next name down the list. Founder can override anything.

Slug generation

{company-slug} derives from plan §1 Business Name:

• lowercase
• replace spaces and special chars with hyphens
• ASCII only
• max 40 chars

E.g., "Operator's Brief" → operators-brief. "Acme Inc." → acme-inc.

Surface to the founder

After writing the manifest, surface a summary:

Team composed: {{N}} agents.

  {{CEO_NAME}}      CEO
  {{FINANCE_NAME}}  Finance / Operations
  {{...}}           ...

Considered but not provisioned: {{LIST}}.

Review the rationale at: ~/.config/agent-biz/intake/team-rationale.md
Review/edit the manifest at: ~/.config/agent-biz/intake/team-manifest.yaml

If you want to override any agent name, edit the YAML directly. Otherwise, confirm to proceed and I'll invoke provisioning.

Wait for founder confirmation. They might:

• Accept as-is → invoke provisioning.
• Override agent names in the YAML → re-read, then invoke provisioning.
• Cut/merge roles → revise the manifest, re-write the rationale, re-confirm.

When you complete

If the team is > 8 or the founder is reviewing, end your response with the appropriate next step. Do not invoke a chained skill.

If the founder has confirmed, end your final response with:

Team confirmed. Invoking agent-biz-provisioning to instantiate your company.

Then call the Skill tool with skill: "agent-biz-provisioning", passing the plan.md and team-manifest.yaml paths.

Critical rules

• Never invent roles. Only provision roles defined in ROLE_CATALOG.md.
• Never skip the founder absorption check. If a domain is in plan §10, it is owned by the founder.
• Always produce both a manifest (YAML) and a rationale (markdown). The YAML is for the next skill; the markdown is for the founder.
• Refuse to proceed if plan.md isn't approved.

References

• ROLE_CATALOG.md (project root) — canonical role specs and selection algorithm
• INTAKE_SCHEMA.md §12 — trigger flag definitions
• roles.md (this directory) — quick-reference summary