war-room

SKILL.md

---
name: war-room
description: Convenes a multi-LLM expert panel to pressure-test hard-to-reverse decisions
version: 1.9.8
triggers:
  - deliberation
  - multi-llm
  - strategy
  - decision-making
  - council
  - reversibility
  - reversibility score is low and adversarial review is warranted
metadata: {"openclaw": {"homepage": "https://github.com/athola/claude-night-market/tree/master/plugins/attune", "emoji": "\ud83e\udd9e", "requires": {"config": ["night-market.conjure:delegation-core", "night-market.memory-palace:strategeion", "night-market.leyline:git-platform"]}}}
source: claude-night-market
source_plugin: attune
---

> **Night Market Skill** — ported from [claude-night-market/attune](https://github.com/athola/claude-night-market/tree/master/plugins/attune). For the full experience with agents, hooks, and commands, install the Claude Code plugin.


## Overview

The War Room convenes multiple AI experts to analyze problems from diverse perspectives, challenge assumptions through adversarial review, and synthesize optimal approaches under the guidance of a Supreme Commander.

### Philosophy

> "The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle."
> - Marvin Minsky, Society of Mind

## Reversibility-Based Routing

Before deliberation, assess the **Reversibility Score (RS)** to determine appropriate resource allocation:

```
RS = (Reversal Cost + Time Lock-In + Blast Radius + Information Loss + Reputation Impact) / 25
```

| RS Range | Type | Mode | Resources |
|----------|------|------|-----------|
| 0.04 - 0.40 | **Type 2** | Express | 1 expert, < 2 min |
| 0.41 - 0.60 | **Type 1B** | Lightweight | 3 experts, 5-10 min |
| 0.61 - 0.80 | **Type 1A** | Full Council | 7 experts, 15-30 min |
| 0.81 - 1.00 | **Type 1A+** | Delphi | 7 experts, 30-60 min |

**Quick Heuristics:**
- Can be A/B tested? → Type 2
- Requires data migration? → Type 1
- Public commitment required? → Type 1A+

See `modules/reversibility-assessment.md` for full scoring guide.

## When To Use

- Architectural decisions with major trade-offs
- Multi-stakeholder problems requiring diverse perspectives
- High-stakes choices with significant consequences (RS > 0.60)
- Novel problems without clear precedent
- When brainstorming produces multiple strong competing approaches

## When NOT To Use

- Simple questions with obvious answers
- Routine implementation tasks
- Well-documented patterns with clear solutions
- Time-critical decisions requiring immediate action
- **Type 2 decisions** (RS ≤ 0.40) — use Express mode or skip War Room entirely

## Expert Panel

### Default (Lightweight Mode)

| Role | Model | Purpose |
|------|-------|---------|
| Supreme Commander | Claude Opus | Final synthesis, escalation decisions |
| Chief Strategist | Claude Sonnet | Approach generation, trade-off analysis |
| Red Team | Gemini Flash | Adversarial challenge, failure modes |

### Full Council (Escalated)

| Role | Model | Purpose |
|------|-------|---------|
| Supreme Commander | Claude Opus | Final synthesis |
| Chief Strategist | Claude Sonnet | Approach generation |
| Intelligence Officer | Gemini 2.5 Pro | Large context analysis (1M+) |
| Field Tactician | GLM-4.7 | Implementation feasibility |
| Scout | Qwen Turbo | Quick data gathering |
| Red Team Commander | Gemini Flash | Adversarial challenge |
| Logistics Officer | Qwen Max | Resource estimation |

## Deliberation Protocol

### Two-Round Default

```
Round 1: Generation
  - Phase 1: Intelligence Gathering (Scout, Intel Officer)
  - Phase 2: Situation Assessment (Chief Strategist)
  - Phase 3: COA Development (Multiple experts, parallel)
  - Commander Escalation Check

Round 2: Pressure Testing
  - Phase 4: Red Team Review (all COAs)
  - Phase 5: Voting + Narrowing (top 2-3)
  - Phase 6: Premortem Analysis (selected COA)
  - Phase 7: Supreme Commander Synthesis
  - Phase 8: Discussion Publishing
```

### Delphi Extension (High-Stakes)

For high-stakes decisions, extend to iterative Delphi convergence:
- Multiple rounds until expert consensus
- Convergence threshold: 0.85

## Integration

### With Brainstorm

**War Room is AUTOMATICALLY INVOKED** from `Skill(attune:project-brainstorming)` after Phase 3 (Approach Generation).

The brainstorm skill passes all context to War Room:
- Problem statement and constraints
- Generated approaches with pros/cons
- Comparison matrix
- Reversibility assessment (automatically calculated)

**Bypass conditions** (only if ALL true):
- RS ≤ 0.40 (Type 2 decision - clearly reversible)
- Single obvious approach with no meaningful trade-offs
- Low complexity with well-documented pattern
- User explicitly declines after seeing RS assessment

```bash
# Automatic invocation from brainstorm (do not skip)
/attune:war-room --from-brainstorm

# Direct invocation (standalone)
/attune:war-room "Should we use microservices or monolith for this system?"
```

### With Memory Palace

Sessions persist to the **Strategeion** (War Palace):

```
~/.claude/memory-palace/strategeion/
  - war-table/      # Active sessions
  - campaign-archive/  # Historical decisions
  - doctrine/       # Learned patterns
  - armory/         # Expert configurations
```

### With Conjure

Experts are invoked via conjure delegation:
- `conjure:gemini-delegation` for Gemini models
- `conjure:qwen-delegation` for Qwen models
- Direct CLI for GLM-4.7 (`ccgd` or `claude-glm --dangerously-skip-permissions`)

## Usage

### Basic Invocation

```bash
/attune:war-room "What architecture should we use for the new payment system?"
```

### With Context

```bash
/attune:war-room "Best approach for API versioning" --files src/api/**/*.py
```

### Reversibility Assessment Only

Quick assessment without full deliberation:

```bash
/attune:war-room "Database migration to MongoDB" --assess-only
```

Output:
```
Reversibility Assessment
========================
Decision: Database migration to MongoDB

Dimensions:
  Reversal Cost:      5/5 (months of rework)
  Time Lock-In:       4/5 (migration path hardens)
  Blast Radius:       5/5 (all services affected)
  Information Loss:   4/5 (query patterns, ACID)
  Reputation Impact:  2/5 (internal unless downtime)

Reversibility Score: 0.80
Decision Type: Type 1A (One-Way Door)
Recommended Mode: Full Council

Proceed with full deliberation? [Y/n]
```

### Force Express Mode (Type 2)

Skip to rapid decision for clearly reversible choices:

```bash
/attune:war-room "Which logging library to use" --express
```

### Force Full Council

Override RS assessment for critical decisions:

```bash
/attune:war-room "Migration strategy" --full-council
```

### Delphi Mode

For highest-stakes irreversible decisions:

```bash
/attune:war-room "Long-term platform decision" --delphi
```

### Resume Session

```bash
/attune:war-room --resume war-room-20260120-153022
```

## Output

### Decision Document

The War Room produces a Supreme Commander Decision document:

```markdown
## SUPREME COMMANDER DECISION: {session_id}

### Reversibility Assessment
| Dimension | Score | Rationale |
|-----------|-------|-----------|
| Reversal Cost | X/5 | ... |
| Time Lock-In | X/5 | ... |
| Blast Radius | X/5 | ... |
| Information Loss | X/5 | ... |
| Reputation Impact | X/5 | ... |

**RS: 0.XX | Type: [1A+/1A/1B/2] | Mode: [delphi/full_council/lightweight/express]**

### Decision
**Selected Approach**: [Name]

### Rationale
[Why this approach was selected]

### Implementation Orders
1. [ ] Immediate actions
2. [ ] Short-term actions

### Watch Points
[From Premortem - what to monitor]

### Reversal Plan (for Type 1 decisions)
[If this decision proves wrong, here's the exit strategy]

### Dissenting Views
[For the record]
```

### Session Artifacts

Saved to Strategeion:
- Intelligence reports
- Situation assessment
- All COAs (with full attribution after unsealing)
- Red Team challenges
- Premortem analysis
- Final decision

## Anonymization

Expert contributions are anonymized during deliberation using Merkle-DAG:
- Responses labeled as "Response A, B, C..." during review
- Attribution revealed only after decision is made
- Hash verification ensures integrity

See `modules/merkle-dag.md` for details.

## Escalation

### Automatic (Reversibility-Based)

Deliberation mode is automatically selected based on Reversibility Score:

| RS Score | Automatic Mode |
|----------|----------------|
| ≤ 0.40 | Express (bypass full War Room) |
| 0.41 - 0.60 | Lightweight panel |
| 0.61 - 0.80 | Full Council |
| > 0.80 | Full Council and Delphi |

### Manual Override

The Supreme Commander may override automatic classification when:
- High complexity detected (multiple architectural trade-offs)
- Significant disagreement between initial experts
- Novel problem domain requiring specialized analysis
- Precedent-setting decision (future decisions will follow pattern)
- Political/organizational sensitivity beyond technical scope

**Escalation requires written justification with RS assessment.**

### De-escalation

Equally important: identify decisions being over-deliberated:
- If RS ≤ 0.40, recommend Express mode or immediate execution
- Challenge "false irreversibility" ("we can't change this later" without evidence)
- Track de-escalation rate as team health metric

## Configuration

### User Settings

```json
{
  "war_room": {
    "default_mode": "lightweight",
    "auto_escalate": true,
    "delphi_threshold": 0.85,
    "max_delphi_rounds": 5
  }
}
```

### Hook Auto-Trigger

War Room can be auto-suggested via hook when:
- Keywords detected ("strategic decision", "trade-off", etc.)
- Complexity score exceeds threshold (0.7)
- User has opted in via settings

## Agent Teams Execution Mode

### Overview

When `--agent-teams` is specified (or auto-selected for Full Council / Delphi modes), the War Room uses Claude Code Agent Teams instead of sequential conjure delegation. Each expert runs as a persistent teammate with bidirectional messaging, enabling real-time deliberation instead of batch request/response cycles.

**Requires**: Claude Code 2.1.32+, `CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS=1`, tmux installed.

### When Agent Teams Helps

| Mode | Without Agent Teams | With Agent Teams | Benefit |
|------|-------------------|-----------------|---------|
| Express | Sonnet direct call | N/A (overkill) | None — skip |
| Lightweight | 3 sequential delegations | N/A (overhead exceeds benefit) | None — skip |
| Full Council | 7 sequential/parallel delegations | 7 teammates with live inbox messaging | Experts can **react** to each other's COAs in real-time |
| Delphi | Multiple delegation rounds | Persistent team iterates until convergence | No re-invocation cost per round; state preserved across rounds |

**Rule of thumb**: Use agent teams only for Full Council and Delphi modes. Lightweight and Express modes don't generate enough inter-expert traffic to justify the coordination overhead.

### Team Configuration

```bash
# War Room agent team structure
Team: war-room-{session-id}
  Lead: supreme-commander (Opus) — orchestrates phases, final synthesis
  Teammates:
    chief-strategist (Sonnet) — approach generation
    intel-officer (Sonnet) — deep context analysis
    field-tactician (Sonnet) — implementation feasibility
    scout (Haiku) — rapid reconnaissance
    red-team (Sonnet) — adversarial challenge
    logistics (Haiku) — resource estimation
```

Note: In agent teams mode, all teammates run as Claude Code instances (Opus/Sonnet/Haiku). External LLM experts (Gemini, Qwen, GLM) are not used because agent teams requires the Claude CLI. The trade-off is losing model diversity but gaining real-time inter-expert messaging.

### Deliberation Flow with Agent Teams

1. **Lead creates team** → spawns teammates in tmux panes
2. **Phase 1 (Intel)**: Lead assigns intel tasks to scout and intel-officer via inbox
3. **Phase 3 (COA)**: Lead broadcasts situation assessment; teammates develop COAs independently; messaging allows clarifying questions mid-development
4. **Phase 4 (Red Team)**: Red-team teammate receives all COAs, posts challenges; other teammates can **respond to challenges in real-time**
5. **Phase 5 (Voting)**: Lead broadcasts ballot; teammates rank via inbox messages
6. **Phase 6 (Premortem)**: All teammates receive selected COA; can build on each other's failure scenarios
7. **Phase 7 (Synthesis)**: Lead collects all artifacts, produces decision
8. **Phase 8 (Discussion Publishing)**: After the
   Supreme Commander Decision document is finalized,
   you MUST execute `modules/discussion-publishing.md`
   to publish the decision to GitHub Discussions.
   Publishing is the default. The user can decline
   with "n". See the "Discussion Publishing (REQUIRED)"
   section below for the full step-by-step workflow.

### Falling Back to Conjure Delegation

If agent teams fails (tmux unavailable, team creation error), the War Room automatically falls back to standard conjure delegation. The deliberation protocol is identical — only the execution backend differs.

### Cost Considerations

Agent teams is significantly more token-intensive than conjure delegation (each teammate maintains its own context window). Use only when the coordination value justifies the cost — typically Delphi mode where multiple rounds of revision make persistent teammates worthwhile.

### Discussion Publishing (REQUIRED)

After Phase 7 synthesis completes (in any execution
mode), you MUST execute the discussion publishing
workflow. This is not optional unless the user
explicitly declines.

**Execute these steps in order:**

1. Read `modules/discussion-publishing.md` for the
   full GraphQL workflow
2. Ask the user: "Publishing this decision to GitHub
   Discussions. [Y/n]"
3. If the user says "n", skip to Related Skills.
   Otherwise proceed with steps 4-6.
4. Run the `gh api graphql` commands from the module
   to create a Discussion in the "Decisions" category
5. Post phase summaries as threaded comments on the
   Discussion
6. Update the local strategeion file with the
   Discussion URL

If GitHub Discussions are unavailable (non-GitHub
platform, Discussions disabled, `gh` not authenticated),
warn the user and skip. Publishing failures never
block the war room workflow.

## Related Skills

- `Skill(attune:project-brainstorming)` - Pre-War Room ideation
- `Skill(imbue:scope-guard)` - Scope management
- `Skill(imbue:rigorous-reasoning)` - Reasoning methodology
- `Skill(conjure:delegation-core)` - Expert dispatch
- `Skill(conjure:agent-teams)` - Agent teams coordination (Full Council / Delphi)

## Related Commands

- `/attune:war-room` - Invoke this skill
- `/attune:brainstorm` - Pre-War Room ideation
- `/memory-palace:strategeion` - Access War Room history

## References

### Strategic Foundations
- Sun Tzu - Art of War (intelligence gathering)
- Clausewitz - On War (friction and fog)
- Robert Greene - 33 Strategies of War (unity of command)
- MDMP - U.S. Army (structured decision process)
- Gary Klein - Premortem (failure mode analysis)
- Karpathy - LLM Council (anonymized peer review)

### Reversibility Framework
- [Jeff Bezos - Type 1 vs Type 2 Decisions](https://ashikuzzaman.com/2025/03/03/amazons-type-1-vs-type-2-decisions-a-framework-for-effective-decision-making/) (Amazon shareholder letters)
- [Farnam Street - Reversible and Irreversible Decisions](https://fs.blog/reversible-irreversible-decisions/) (STOP-LOP-KNOW framework)
- [Tapan Desai - One-Way and Two-Way Door Decision-Making](https://tapandesai.com/one-way-two-way-doors-decision-making/) (practical application)