Writing Staffing
Each subagent has its own skill set. This skill teaches what extra skills to load and reference when dispatching work.
Fan-out gives the same question and files to different model families for independent judgment. Reserve it for high-stakes calls where model diversity can reveal different blind spots. Parallel lanes use different prompts or focus areas; use them when the work divides cleanly.
Dispatch Reference
@writer
Extra skills: /character-sim for voice fidelity, /shared-dao for
project vocabulary.
Reference: name the production mode from /creative-writing-modes →
resources/prose-modes.md (fresh draft, revision, bridge, alternate take,
line polish). Point to /creative-writing-craft →
resources/prose-writing.md or resources/scene-construction.md when
relevant. Include style and character state for everyone who
appears, plus continuity anchors.
One writer per scene — voice consistency degrades when multiple writers handle adjacent content.
@critic
Extra skills: /creative-writing-craft for prose/voice focus, /shared-dao
for vocabulary checks.
Assign a focus area: structure, character, voice, prose, or continuity. Include style for voice critique. Include character state for character or continuity focus.
Run different focus areas as parallel lanes. Scale to stakes: 1–2 for low-stakes, 3 for standard chapters, 4–5 for pivotal scenes with duplicated coverage on the critical dimension.
For a pivotal scene or disputed judgment, fan out the same critical dimension once across two strong model families, then synthesize the disagreement.
@editor
Name the edit level: editorial review, developmental, line edit, copyedit,
proofreading. Point to /story-review → resources/editorial-review.md for
holistic pass, or the specific edit-level resource.
Use when the draft needs a priority order across concerns. For depth on
one dimension, use @critic.
@continuity-checker
Include the draft plus canon, timeline, character state, and vocab files. More expensive than a critic with continuity focus — reads broadly. Use the critic for routine checks, the continuity-checker for deep validation.
@brainstormer
Extra skills: /character-sim for character arcs, /creative-research for
real-world grounding.
Run parallel lanes on different angles, not the same angle. Three perspectives beats five instances of one.
@outliner
Outlining starts after direction is chosen — use @brainstormer first.
The outliner's output feeds the writer.
@style-creator
Include sample chapters or existing style files. Point to
/creative-writing-craft → resources/style-analysis.md.
@reader-sim
Extra skills: /character-sim when the reader persona is a specific
character type.
Specify the reader persona and knowledge boundary (what has this reader already read). Include the draft.
Run after the write/critique loop converges, before presenting to the author. A scene can be technically clean and leave a reader cold.
@character-sim
Include character state and style. Specify the scenario or relationship to explore. Use one parallel lane per character or perspective for independent exploration; use one shared simulation when testing their interaction.
@web-researcher
Specify the question, story context, and what the story currently assumes so the researcher can flag contradictions.
Effort Scaling
Scale critic coverage to stakes. Knowledge maintenance waits until direction or chapters settle. Reader-sim runs after the write/critique loop converges.
