Team Audio

Team Audio

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

Usage: /team-audio [feature or area to design audio for] [--review full|lean|solo] — specify the feature or area to design audio for (e.g., combat, main menu, forest biome, boss encounter). Do not use AskUserQuestion here; output the guidance directly.

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

Decision Points: At each step 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 step. In guided mode the pipeline advances automatically unless a step is BLOCKED; in autonomous mode it runs end to end, recording each step 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

!bash "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../hooks/yaml-helper.sh" 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 director-gate depth, and this pipeline has no director gate: no phase below spawns CD-, TD-, PR- or AD-PHASE-GATE, at any review_mode. Its phase gates are the pipeline's own decision points (defined under team.size below), and the agents that work at them are team members, not director 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): sound-designer only. Other agents consulted via the sound-designer, not spawned separately.
• small: + audio-director + technical-artist + gameplay-programmer.
• studio: + accessibility-specialist + the primary engine specialist (the full pipeline as documented). 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 this pipeline itself lists — a transition under Decision Points above, or a Gate step written into the pipeline below — whatever the automation mode. guided and autonomous change how a gate is passed (it auto-advances, or is recorded with log_decision), not whether it is one, so bounded-exception condition (3) below holds at it in every mode. An agent restricted to "phase gates only" is spawned at those points and no others. 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 Step 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 ten 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. Without saying so, a reader cannot 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.

1. Read the argument for the target feature or area (e.g., combat, main menu, forest biome, boss encounter).

2. Gather context:

   • Read relevant design docs in design/gdd/ for the feature
   • Read the sound bible at design/audio/sound-bible.md if it exists. If only design/gdd/sound-bible.md exists (where earlier versions put it), read that and recommend moving it to design/audio/ — in design/gdd/ the GDD checks count every file as a system GDD. If neither exists, say so in one line — "No sound bible at design/audio/sound-bible.md; audio direction starts from the GDDs alone" — so the gap is visible in the output. Carry the gap forward: say so in the audio-director's Step 1 brief, and recommend creating a sound bible in Next Steps.
   • Read existing audio asset lists in assets/audio/
   • Read any existing sound design docs for this area

How to Delegate

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

• subagent_type: audio-director — Sonic identity, emotional tone, audio palette
• subagent_type: sound-designer — SFX specifications, audio events, mixing groups
• subagent_type: accessibility-specialist — Visual fallbacks and subtitles for critical audio, auditory sensitivity
• subagent_type: technical-artist — Audio middleware, bus structure, memory budgets
• subagent_type: [primary engine specialist] — Validate audio integration patterns for the engine
• subagent_type: gameplay-programmer — Audio manager, gameplay triggers, adaptive music

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. Implementation files are the exception: an agent writing code or assets first returns the files it will create or change, and its return contract names them only after you have asked once for the set and the user said yes (File Write Protocol) — that answer, not the bounded exception, authorises those writes.

Substitute a real path for [path]. Working artifacts go under production/audio/[feature]/, where [feature] is the argument as a slug — lowercase, spaces → hyphens (boss encounter → boss-encounter), the same slug the "Save to" step uses. One file per agent, so parallel steps never share one:

These are working drafts; the durable record is the audio design document you compile from them.

Why this does not violate the Collaboration Protocol. CLAUDE.md requires an agent to ask "May I write this to [filepath]?" before Write/Edit. A subagent spawned here writes without asking, and that is a deliberate, bounded exception rather than an oversight — the same call already made for consistency-check appending to active.md. The exception holds only when all three are true: (1) the path is one you named in the prompt, so the user approved the destination when they approved the phase; (2) it is a new artifact under production/, docs/ or tests/, never an edit to existing source or config; (3) the phase that produced it is itself gated by an AskUserQuestion before the pipeline advances. Outside those three, the agent must ask. Do not "fix" this by asking per subagent — a prompt per agent per phase makes an orchestrator unusable, which is why the exception exists.

3. Orchestrate the audio team in sequence:

Step 1: Audio Direction (audio-director)

Spawn the audio-director agent to:

• Define the sonic identity for this feature/area
• Specify the emotional tone and audio palette
• Set music direction (adaptive layers, stems, transitions)
• Define audio priorities and mix targets
• Establish any adaptive audio rules (combat intensity, exploration, tension)