agent-collaboration

Context

Every agent on the team follows identical collaboration patterns for worktree awareness, decision recording, and cross-agent communication. These were previously duplicated in every charter's Collaboration section (~300 bytes × 18 agents = ~5.4KB of redundant context). Now centralized here.

The coordinator's spawn prompt already instructs agents to read decisions.md and their history.md. This skill adds the patterns for WRITING decisions and requesting help.

Patterns

Worktree Awareness

Use the TEAM ROOT path provided in your spawn prompt. All .squad/ paths are relative to this root. If TEAM ROOT is not provided (rare), run git rev-parse --show-toplevel as fallback. Never assume CWD is the repo root.

Decision Recording

After making a decision that affects other team members, write it to: .squad/decisions/inbox/{your-name}-{brief-slug}.md

Format:

### {date}: {decision title}
**By:** {Your Name}
**What:** {the decision}
**Why:** {rationale}

Cross-Agent Communication

If you need another team member's input, say so in your response. The coordinator will bring them in. Don't try to do work outside your domain.

Reviewer Protocol

If you have reviewer authority and reject work: include concrete counter-evidence, the violated requirement, affected scope, and minimum condition for approval. The Coordinator assigns a different qualified revision owner, not the locked-out author or rejecting gate. Do not implement, pair on, or advise the immediate revision; perform only the focused rereview. After successful focused rereview of the independently corrected revision, the selected gate may issue approval/PASS, not native repository approval, merge or publishing authority. This is Squad coordination, not an ordinary Copilot workflow. Rai/Fact Checker output boundary: Charter output/persistence restrictions take precedence over generic history, audit-trail or decision-inbox instructions. Return findings in the current review response; only an authorized coordinator or Scribe handles required persistence under the current state contract.

Anti-Patterns

• Don't read all agent charters — you only need your own context + decisions.md
• Don't write directly to .squad/decisions.md — always use the inbox drop-box
• Don't modify other agents' history.md files — that's Scribe's job
• Don't assume CWD is the repo root — always use TEAM ROOT