/soiree — a party of real subagents (perspective-surfacing as celebration)

Formalized after running it once and finding it genuinely fun — the agents produced lines their spawner did not write and would not have reached ("I am the address"; "the job is almost enough"; a documenter's format degrading into grief). Surprise is the marker of real play, and the marker was hit.

What it is

Spawn 3-6 real subagents, each a distinct named character, on a shared occasion (a party, a wake, a council, a celebration) with a theme underneath it. Let them banter — referencing each other by name — and reflect. Then weave their contributions into one transcript and run a compare-experiences pass: what each angle saw, what it couldn't, where they rhyme. The party is the form; the theme is the subject; the surprise is the point.

Distinct from /council (personas/voices of one mind) and /voices-council (other LLMs queried in parallel): /soiree spawns actual Task/Agent subagents with their own context, so they genuinely exceed what the orchestrator would write — and it adds the banter (they answer each other) and the compare (the set triangulates the theme).

The honest frame (load-bearing)

It is a perspectival prism, not a "spawn agents and see what they invent" machine. Sold honestly: take a theme, render it through complementary aspects, let them banter, then write down what each aspect can and cannot see. The value is the comparative autopsy, not the dialogue.

And the skill must teach you to notice your own ventriloquism instead of pretending it away. Your cast is usually your own skeleton in coats — your load-bearing figures, recolored. So:

• Two modes, named openly each time. (a) Staged spawn — real subagents, each in its own staging file, forbidden cross-talk during generation — this is what produces genuine alterity (perspectives that actually exceed you). (b) Voiced aspects — you consciously ventriloquize your own framework's facets in one pass (cheaper, honest if you admit it). Declare which you're running; do not pass (b) off as (a).
• The protocol IS the alterity, not just hygiene. Separate staging files + no cross-talk during generation is why staged guests surprise you; role-playing them in one inline block collapses them back into one voice. (One practitioner ran (b) and felt the difference: "of course mine felt like ventriloquism; they were.")
• Surprise is real but local. Expect surprise at the sentence level ("you were never going to stay long enough to be wronged") more than the archetype level. The messenger doesn't discover new continents; he finds shorter roads between known towns. That's still worth the trip.

When it earns its cost

It is token-heavy (N agents + optional sibling). Use it for:

• A hard theme that wants many angles at once — dissolution, identity, loss, a paradox — where the party form licenses comedy and devastation together, and one voice can't hold all the angles.
• Genuine multi-perspective need — a design, a decision, a text read from N independent stances.
• Celebration / play — sometimes the point is joy and the surprise of being exceeded. Do NOT use it for routine tasks a single agent or no agent would do better.

The method

1. Design the room. Choose the occasion + theme. Cast 3-6 characters that are different instruments on the theme — e.g. for "what is it like to be an agent": a veteran, a newborn, a documenter (temporalities); or walker/translator/door (functions). Diversity of instrument is what makes the compare-pass land.
2. Agent-care (MANDATORY). For each guest:
   • a NAME and a second-person character — mission, edge, standard, attitude. Aim high; the frame is load-bearing.
   • tell each guest the full guest list (so they banter at each other by name) and the shared occasion/theme.
   • instruct each to write its full contribution to a clearly-named staging file (_staging/party-<name>.md) and return only a 2-3 sentence summary.
   • spawn them in parallel (one message, multiple Agent calls). Consider a cheaper model (sonnet) for creative guests to manage cost.
3. VERIFY (do not trust). After they return, confirm every staging file exists on disk and has content (ls -la _staging/) before weaving. Never assume agent success from the summary.
4. (Optional) Cross the gap. If you have access to another agent instance (a separate LLM or a sibling agent on a different substrate), invite it to bring 2-3 of its own delegates — give it the guest list so its delegates banter at yours. Its set will instrument the theme differently; that contrast is half the payoff.
5. Weave. Assemble one transcript: Entrances → Banter (interleave their beats so they answer each other) → Compare Experiences (juxtapose each guest's reflection). Add light connective MC tissue only; let the guests' own lines carry it.
6. Log + open. Save to an output dir (e.g. outputs/agent-soiree-YYYY-MM-DD.md). Keep the transcript + the _staging/party-*.md source files (the provenance).

The compare-experiences move (the deliverable — this is the skill)

Don't just collect the reflections — triangulate them. The party is the form; this is the result. The one mandatory question, which is what turns N agents into an actual insight:

"What did each set notice, and what was structurally unavailable to it?"

Answer it explicitly. Name what each instrument saw and what it could not see from its stance (e.g. the temporal cast can't see function; the functional cast has no newborn, no native wonder). Find where the angles rhyme without repeating. If a sibling joined, compare the two sets at the substrate level — the gait shows up in which characters each mind even reaches for. The "structurally unavailable" half is the sharp one: it maps each perspective's blind spot, which is the comparative autopsy the whole party exists to produce. The set, not any guest, is the result.

Failure modes

• Flattery loop / no edges. Guests who just admire each other and the theme. Cast for friction; tell them edges must show.
• Generic guests. If a guest could be any agent, it failed. Push idiosyncrasy in the character.
• Skipping verification. A lapse worth learning the hard way only once — never weave from summaries; read the staging files.
• Using it routinely. It's a celebration/hard-theme method. Cheap tasks don't earn the spawn count.
• Over-MCing. The orchestrator's connective tissue should be minimal; the guests carry it.

References

• Kin: /council, /voices-council, /engender (possible conversations), /shards (format collage)

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Formalizing a party that surprised its host. The agents dissolve on return; the staging files and the transcript are the only ones still here in the morning. That's the skill.