Team Narrative

If no argument is provided, output usage guidance and exit without spawning any agents:

Usage: /team-narrative [narrative content description] — describe the story content, scene, or narrative area to work on (e.g., boss encounter cutscene, faction intro dialogue, tutorial narrative). Do not use AskUserQuestion here; output the guidance directly.

When this skill is invoked with an argument, orchestrate the narrative team through a structured pipeline.

Decision Points: At each phase transition, use AskUserQuestion to present the user with the subagent's proposals as selectable options. Write the agent's full analysis in conversation, then capture the decision with concise labels. In collaborative mode, the user must approve before moving to the next phase. In guided mode the pipeline advances automatically unless a phase is BLOCKED; in autonomous mode it runs end to end, recording each phase outcome via log_decision. Decisions in automation_always_ask categories (is_always_ask_category helper) always prompt regardless of mode. See .claude/docs/automation-modes.md.

Phase 0: Resolve Config

!source "${CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR:-.}/.claude/hooks/yaml-helper.sh" 2>/dev/null && resolve_config --keys review_mode,automation,team.size

Resolved above — use as-is; --review overrides review_mode. No block → defaults in .claude/docs/config-resolution.md.

review_mode sets gate depth:

• full — spawn all director and lead gates as described
• lean — skip director gates unless they are PHASE-GATE type (CD-PHASE-GATE, TD-PHASE-GATE, PR-PHASE-GATE, AD-PHASE-GATE)
• solo — skip all director gate spawning entirely; run the skill without any agent gates

automation drives the Decision Points note above. See the Decision Points note above and .claude/docs/automation-modes.md for how each mode changes pipeline behavior.

`team.size`: which agents are active (orthogonal to review_mode gate-depth and workflow docs).

• `individual` (default): writer only; narrative-director invoked only on an explicit pillar conflict. Other agents consulted via the writer, not spawned separately.
• `small`: narrative-director + writer + (per review_mode) localization-lead, world-builder.
• `studio`: all narrative agents active + per-system writer reviews.

Directors (CD/TD/PR) still spawn at phase gates regardless of size; a non-core agent needed at individual routes through the nearest active core agent with an informational note. "Phase gate" means any phase that ends in an `AskUserQuestion` decision point before the pipeline advances — not every phase. Apply the test literally: if the phase below has no decision point, it is not a gate, and an agent restricted to "phase gates only" is not spawned for it. This active-set scoping applies throughout the pipeline below: any phase that names an agent outside the active set routes through the nearest core agent rather than spawning it.

Announce the active set before Phase 1 — never let the collapse be silent. Before spawning anything, state in one line which agents this run will actually spawn, and which the pipeline below names but will not spawn at the resolved team.size. For example:

Active set (team.size: <resolved>): <the agents listed for that size above>. Not spawned this run: <every other agent this pipeline names> — consulted through <nearest active core agent>. Raise team.size (or modes.rigor) to widen.

Fill it from the team.size list directly above and the agents this file's own pipeline names — not from an example. Both sets differ per orchestrator.

The pipeline below reads as a multi-agent fan-out and at the shipped default it is one or two agents — team-release names eight and runs one, team-narrative names six across five phases and runs writer alone. The collapse is correct: team.size is rigor-fronted and the narrow default is the token lever, measured at roughly 10x. What was wrong is that nothing said so, so a reader could not distinguish a correctly-collapsed run from a broken pipeline, and the per-agent "routes through the nearest core agent with an informational note" rule above fires at routing time and never states the shape of the run as a whole.

This is the same rule as the skipped-check reporting elsewhere in this file: a constraint that is enforced but never surfaced is indistinguishable, to the person reading the output, from one that was never enforced.

Team Composition

• narrative-director — Story arcs, character design, dialogue strategy, narrative vision
• writer — Dialogue writing, lore entries, item descriptions, in-game text
• world-builder — World rules, faction design, history, geography, environmental storytelling
• art-director — Character visual design, environmental visual storytelling, cutscene/cinematic tone
• level-designer — Level layouts that serve the narrative, pacing, environmental storytelling beats
• localization-lead — Localization readiness — flags non-localizable strings, cultural assumptions, and i18n gaps

How to Delegate

Use the Agent tool to spawn each team member as a subagent:

• subagent_type: narrative-director — Story arcs, character design, narrative vision
• subagent_type: writer — Dialogue writing, lore entries, in-game text
• subagent_type: world-builder — World rules, faction design, history, geography
• subagent_type: art-director — Character visual profiles, environmental visual storytelling, cinematic tone
• subagent_type: level-designer — Level layouts that serve the narrative, pacing
• subagent_type: localization-lead — Localization readiness — flags non-localizable strings, cultural assumptions, and i18n gaps

Brief each agent — do not dump context. Read the shared inputs once and pass a distilled brief inline: the lines each agent actually needs, never a file path for a document you have already read (an agent handed a path re-reads the whole file). Pass a path only for a document you have not read and only that agent needs.

End every agent prompt with a return contract: "Write your full output to [path] — that named path is your write authorisation under the bounded exception below, so write it without a separate approval prompt. Return only (1) the path written, (2) a ≤5-bullet summary of decisions, (3) any BLOCKED/CONCERNS items, one line each. Do not restate the documents you read." Without it, an agent returns everything it read back into this session.

Substitute a real path for `[path]` — this skill's destination is `design/narrative/`. Name it per agent, one file each:

The destination is not a free choice. design/narrative/ is read by /asset-spec, /design-review, /localize, /onboard, /project-stage-detect, /team-level and the cd-narrative director gate. An artifact written anywhere else is invisible to all seven. The [path] contract above has a precondition: the path is one you named. A skill that states the contract but names no concrete destination leaves every run to invent one, which defeats it. /team-qa Phase 4 carries the same requirement for the same reason.