Team Composition Patterns

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Deciding how many agents to spawn for a task
• Choosing between a review team versus a feature team versus a debug team
• Selecting the correct subagenttype for each role to ensure agents have the tools they need
• Configuring display modes (tmux

Example prompts

• “/team-composition-patterns”

Workflow steps

5 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

1. 1Every team needs a coordinator — Either designate a team-lead or have the user coordinate directly
2. 2Match roles to agent types — Use specialized agents (reviewer, debugger, implementer) when available
3. 3Avoid duplicate roles — Two agents doing the same thing wastes resources
4. 4Define boundaries upfront — Each teammate needs clear ownership of files or responsibilities
5. 5Keep it small — 2-4 teammates is the sweet spot; 5+ requires significant coordination overhead

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 46891e7. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md (its code samples are json).

  From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

• Network

  No URLs in SKILL.md.

  From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

• Credentials

  Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

  From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Team Composition Patterns loads about 2k tokens when it runs, and up to ~5.2k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 145 tokens; SKILL.md has 783 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~145

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~2k

With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them

~5.2k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from wshobson/agents at commit 46891e7, republished under its MIT licence (© wshobson). 783 words, ~2,038 tokens.

name

team-composition-patterns

description

Design optimal agent team compositions with sizing heuristics, preset configurations, and agent type selection. Use this skill when deciding how many agents to spawn for a task, when choosing between a review team versus a feature team versus a debug team, when selecting the correct subagent_type for each role to ensure agents have the tools they need, when configuring display modes (tmux, iTerm2, in-process) for a CI or local environment, or when building a custom team composition for a non-standard workflow such as a migration or security audit.

version

1.0.2

{
  "teammateMode": "tmux"
}

© wshobson, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 2 other files (references) in plugins/agent-teams/skills/team-composition-patterns of wshobson/agents.

• SKILL.md
• references/agent-type-selection.md
• references/preset-teams.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 46891e7