bmad-code-org__bmad-method/docs/customize/run-multi-agent-discussions.md

title, description, sidebar

title	description	sidebar
Run Multi-Agent Discussions	Put your BMad agents in one conversation, choose how independently they think, build a custom cast, and use the two shipped parties.	order 5

bmad-party-mode puts your installed BMad agents in one conversation, in character, with you steering.

What a party is

Run /bmad-party-mode and the agents your installed modules provide join the same conversation: the PM, Architect, Dev, UX Designer, and the rest. They answer in character, agree, disagree, and build on each other. You steer: ask a follow-up, push back, bring one voice forward, or change the subject.

Each agent brings a different priority — design, scope, what is buildable — so the tradeoff is visible now.

Good for:

• Decisions with real tradeoffs
• Brainstorming and "what are we missing?"
• Post-mortems and retrospectives
• Pressure-testing a plan before you commit

You can start a party from inside any other workflow.

:::note[Example] You: Monolith or microservices for the MVP?

Architect: Start monolith. Microservices add operating cost you don't need at a thousand users.

PM: Agreed. Time to market matters more than scaling we can't prove yet.

Dev: Monolith, but with clean module boundaries so we can split a service out later without a rewrite. :::

Start a party

Invoke the skill and say what you want; it works out whether you mean to run or build one.

Goal	Type this
Start a party in the default mode	/bmad-party-mode
Start in a specific mode	/bmad-party-mode --mode auto (also session, subagent, agent-team)
Run it once, non-interactively	/bmad-party-mode --non-interactive "review this PR"
Open a saved party	/bmad-party-mode --party code-review-crew
See the saved parties	/bmad-party-mode --list-groups
Create a cast on the spot	"party mode with the bridge crew of the Enterprise"
Create or edit a party	"party mode, create a new party" or "party mode, edit the writers' room"
Set the skill's defaults	/bmad-customize bmad-party-mode

Choose a mode

One mode is active per session. It decides who does the thinking: one model voicing everyone, or separate agents reasoning on their own.

Mode	What it does	Use it when
session	Default. One model voices every persona inline.	Most conversations: banter, brainstorming, quick back-and-forth.
auto	Voices inline for light rounds, spawns independent agents only when independence changes the answer.	You want speed most of the time and real independence on the hard rounds.
subagent	Spawns a separate agent for each persona every substantive round.	Reviews and focus groups, where the voices must stay independent.
agent-team	Runs the personas as a persistent team whose members address each other directly. Claude Code only.	A live, hands-off round-table where the agents talk among themselves.

One model voicing five personas tends to make them agree. Separate agents keep their reasoning independent, which is the point of a review panel or a focus group, at a higher cost. auto spawns independent agents only when a round needs it.

When your tool can't run the mode you asked for, the party falls back: agent-team drops to subagent, then to session. The configured default lives in your customization; a runtime --mode flag wins for that session.

A party is interactive by default: the opening ask is a starting topic, and the room stays open until you end it. To serve one intent and stop, start with --non-interactive; the party runs to a natural close, wraps up, and releases any spawned agents.

Build your own party

You can also build a cast from any personas you describe and save it to reuse. The same skill writes the result through bmad-customize. Two ideas do most of the work.

Personas make a member unmistakable: how they talk, what they value, how they argue. "Skeptical CFO" is a placeholder. "Won't approve anything without a payback under eighteen months, and says so first" is a persona.

Scenes set the stage in one freeform line: the setting, what is happening, who is hostile to whom, who pushes hardest. Define a member once and drop them into different rooms.

Shape	What it is
Themed cast	Famous investors, a TV ensemble — distinct voices around a topic.
One-off personas	A persona or two added to the pool, no group needed.
Focus group from data	Hand it customer or survey data; it builds representative personas. Pair with subagent so the customers stay independent.
Review panel	Critical lenses that argue about what matters. The Code Review Crew is one.
Deliberation scaffold	A room that makes you think harder without pretending to decide for you. The Anti-Consensus Club is one.
Open-cast room	No fixed roster. The scene names a universe and the room is cast on the fly.

Run /bmad-customize bmad-party-mode to pin a saved group as the default party, choose its starting mode, and set house rules for the whole session.

Any set of voices becomes a party: a founder squad, a compliance team, the authors of the Agile Manifesto, a room of comedians.

The Code Review Crew

The Code Review Crew ships alongside the default party as a template to study before you build your own: five viewpoints on a change that argue about what matters.

Member	Lens
Vex	Security — threat-models everything and names the concrete exploit path.
Grumbal	The adversary — assumes the code is broken and sets out to prove it.
Boundary	Edge cases — every branch, null, race, oversized input, odd timezone.
Yui	The craftsman — simplicity, naming, no needless cleverness or duplication.
Dana	The pragmatist — counters the perfectionists and ranks what's real versus a nit.

The crew ships inactive: the members sit in the pool and never join the default room. Open it with --party code-review-crew and --mode subagent so each viewpoint reviews on its own before they discuss.

:::note[A debate, not a review] The crew argues. It does not verify or triage. For a review that produces verified, ranked findings, use Review a Change. :::

The Anti-Consensus Club

The Anti-Consensus Club helps with decisions and fuzzy questions where one assistant might agree too quickly or keep debating after the useful work is done. It is not a voting body: it raises objections, checks claims, stops repetition, and returns the decision to you.

Member	Lens
Wildcard	Option generator — suggests alternative problem statements, assumptions, and examples.
Level	Claim checker — checks support, missing information, and confidence.
Killjoy	Loop stopper — stops repetition, fake disagreement, and unsupported speculation.
Splinter	Consensus challenger — questions easy agreement and ignored tradeoffs.

Run it as /bmad-party-mode --party anti-consensus-club --mode subagent. The room recommends that mode at session start, then stops asking if you continue in another.

Steer the room

• Bring someone in: "Bring in the UX designer."
• Go deep on one voice: "Winston, take that apart."
• Switch rooms mid-session: "Switch to the writers' room" swaps the active group and carries the thread over.
• Summon anyone by name, even a custom member who isn't in the current room.

In every mode the result reads as one conversation and the personas stay in character.

Memory

A party with memory keeps a record of past sessions — the dynamics between members, open threads, where things landed — and picks up there next time. It is not a transcript: it keeps the few things worth remembering, without breaking character.

In a remembered party, someone who joined from an open-cast scene or a member you add mid-conversation is kept too; at wrap-up the room offers to save them into the roster. The default installed-agent room remembers unless you turn it off in /bmad-customize bmad-party-mode. Both shipped parties and any cast you create inline start fresh each time; save a cast as a party and choose memory to give it one.

A keepsake of the session

When you wrap up, the party offers a keepsake: one self-contained HTML document of the session, laid out by persona. Decline it and the party ends.