Staff Session — Chatty-Workflow Planning and Review Driver

There are no tasks or blockedBy. The EM scopes the work, selects the debaters, fires ONE background Workflow, and is freed; the Workflow runs the debate as rounds and synthesizes autonomously. Roles, models and counts: pipelines/staff-session/team-protocol.md § Roles. Doctrine: coordinator/docs/wiki/dispatching-parallel-agents/chatty-workflows.md.

Lightweight tier falls through to single-reviewer dispatch via /review (plan) or /review-code (code) — no Workflow fired.

Arguments

$ARGUMENTS:

• --mode plan|review — required.
• --tier lightweight|standard|full — required. lightweight → single-reviewer dispatch. standard = 2 debaters. full = 3-5 debaters.
• --members "persona-a,persona-b,..." — optional override of auto-selection.
• <input> — required. Plan mode: objectives document/text. Review mode: artifact path.

Step 1 — Parse Arguments and Setup

Parse --mode, --tier (both required — fail with usage message if missing), --members (optional), remaining text as <input>.

Generate run ID (YYYY-MM-DD-HHhMM), spawn timestamp, topic slug from input. Create docs/research/{run-id}-workdir/ (shared paper-trail convention with /coordinator:research — detail: wiki). Output path: plan mode → docs/plans/YYYY-MM-DD-{topic-slug}.md; review mode → state/review-findings/YYYY-MM-DD-{topic-slug}-staff-review.md. Advisory path: {scratch-dir}/advisory.md.

Announce: "Running /staff-session --mode {mode} --tier {tier} on '{topic}'."

Step 2 — Tier Routing

--tier lightweight: do NOT fire a Workflow. Route to /review (plan artifacts) or /review-code (code artifacts) with the specified member (default the Staff Engineer). Announce and STOP — the rest of this command does not execute.

standard/full: fires the chatty Workflow. Continue to Step 3.

Step 3 — Scope (EM Direct)

Write {scratch-dir}/scope.md per the template in pipelines/staff-session/templates-and-fields.md § Step 3. Plan mode: EM writes objectives and constraints only — never the plan. Review mode: EM provides artifact path and focus areas only — never pre-formed findings.

Step 4 — Select Debaters

--members specified → those exact slugs are the debater list. Not specified → match topic + scope to a domain category (the one piece of genuine judgment this step retains). For --tier full, judgment-select 1-3 additional personas and append to an explicit override list.

Resolve the roster via the CLI, not a hand-maintained table:

Shape W (rung 0) — ladder and shapes: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/snippets/resolve-coordinator-bin.md. & "$env:COORDINATOR_SETTINGS_HOME\bin\staff-session-assemble.exe" --session-mode <plan|review> (--domain-signal "<category>" | --slug <slug> [--slug <slug> ...]) --json

Returns {personas: [{slug, agent_file, subagent_type}, ...], narration, source}. Fails loud (usage exit) on an unresolvable domain signal, unknown slug, or the Director of Engineering as a debater — surface that error to the PM verbatim. the Director of Engineering is never a valid debater slug — fixed synthesizer identity (coordinator:eng-director), the Workflow's synthesizer stage in Step 6. Resolver mechanics: wiki.

Debater count: standard = 2 (default pair), full = 3-5 (default pair + judgment-selected additions).

Announce the resolved personas[].slug debaters plus the staff synthesizer to the PM before firing.

Step 5 — Fill Prompts

Prompt templates are not filled by hand: staff-session.manifest.yaml names them and the Workflow reads per-run values from scope.md. Complete {scratch-dir}/scope.md with the run fields, the output and advisory paths, and the Roster table from Step 4's personas[] (slug, subagent_type as agent_type, persona name, perspective, agent_file) — see pipelines/staff-session/templates-and-fields.md § Template vocabulary and the brief. Create {scratch-dir}/mail/.

Step 6 — Fire the Workflow

Emit the Workflow from the manifest; the EM supplies the brief and roster, never a script. CLI resolved per ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/snippets/resolve-coordinator-bin.md (Shape W, rung 0, on a PowerShell host: & "$env:COORDINATOR_SETTINGS_HOME\bin\emit-dispatch-workflow.exe" --pipeline staff-session ... with the same flags):

${COORDINATOR_SETTINGS_HOME:-${CLAUDE_HOME:-$HOME}/.coordinator-claude-settings}/bin/emit-dispatch-workflow --pipeline staff-session --brief {scratch-dir}/scope.md --flag mode=<plan|review> --list roster=<slug>=<agent_type>,<slug>=<agent_type>,... --out {scratch-dir}/staff-session.workflow.mjs

--list roster carries one slug=agent_type per debater from the Roster table (agent_type is Step 4's subagent_type, never hardcoded — game-dev personas use game-dev:); --flag mode is required. Fire the printed Workflow line as ONE background Workflow. The graph is staff-session.manifest.yaml: round 1 (all debaters in parallel), one rebuttal round for each debater with unread mail, then the synthesizer (coordinator:eng-director), the only output to the EM. Ordering is the manifest's depends_on.

Step 7 — EM Is Freed

After firing, tell the PM the topic, debater names, and that you will be notified on completion. You are now free to continue with the PM. Do not poll, monitor, or message the agents — the script self-governs via team-protocol.md.

Step 8 — On Workflow Completion Notification

1. Read {output-path}; verify substantive content (not just headers/a stub).
2. Mode-specific verification: plan mode → ## Implementation Plan section with tasks/files/steps, and the marker **Review:** Staff session ({participants}) — debated and synthesized. Ready for enrichment. present byte-exact (this line is the single authoritative producer copy enrich-and-review's gate matches against — never hand-type a second copy). Review mode → findings structured with severities/persona attributions, ## Verdict line present.
3. Check for advisory: test -f {scratch-dir}/advisory.md; read if present.
4. Commit the output artifact, scoped to {output-path} (git commit -m … -- {output-path}), message staff-session: {mode} — {topic-slug}. Then commit the paper trail as an explicit file list, not the whole workdir — {scratch-dir}/scope.md, *-position.md, synthesis.md, and advisory.md when written — message staff-session: paper trail — {topic-slug}; the archive op in item 5 cannot archive an untracked workdir; detail: wiki.
5. Archive-and-cleanup: invoke fleet.archive_paper_trail with run_id={run-id}, topic_slug={topic-slug}, dry_run=false. Moves {scratch-dir} to docs/research/archive/YYYY-MM-DD-{topic-slug}/, lands one scoped commit, removes the source tree. Safe no-op on re-run. Mechanics and CLI-trampoline caveat: wiki.
6. Present to PM: mode-specific framing ("ready for /enrich-and-review" / "synthesized findings"), 2-3 bullet executive summary, output path, and — if advisory exists — a pointer to the archived advisory.

Error Handling

See pipelines/staff-session/templates-and-fields.md § Error Handling Matrix (debater crash, synthesizer failure, Workflow refusal, non-convergence, unknown slug, missing output).