Members

agents is the list of members, in declaration order. Each one is an agent doing a job inside the team.

Prefer ref over restating an agent. A member that names a catalogue agent inherits its model, tools, prompt and its own subagents; everything else here says what is different about that agent in this team.

agents is the list of members, in declaration order.

id (string)

Identity within the team. This is what depends_on names.

ref (string)

Agent catalogue reference, id or id:version. Prefer this over restating an agent inline: a member that names a catalogue agent stays correct when that agent changes.

role (enum)

What the member is for, structurally — about its position in the work rather than its subject matter, because a runtime scheduling a team cares which member opens the work and which closes it.

Role	Meaning
coordinator	Routes work to the others and decides when the team is done.
initiator	Opens the work: takes the request and produces the first result.
contributor	Carries the work forward a step.
reviewer	Checks another member's output and can send it back.
finalizer	Produces what the team hands back.

depends_on (list of member ids)

Members that must finish first. Empty means it can start immediately.

Validated at load: every id must name a member of the same team, nothing may depend on itself, and the graph must terminate. A cycle discovered at run time is discovered with a model already loaded and a person waiting.

trigger (string)

What starts this member from outside the team — an event, a schedule, a webhook. Distinct from depends_on, which is what it waits for inside. The two used to be one prose field, so Event: new ticket received and On completion of the Triage Agent were the same kind of thing to a reader and neither was the same kind of thing to a runtime.

approval (enum)

auto or manual. Use manual for a member that changes something the person owns.

subagents (list)

Specialists this member may hand work to. The same shape as subagents on an agent spec — delegation is one idea, and it should be written the same way wherever it appears.

subagents:
  - name: CellFixer
    ref: jupyter-cell-fixer:0.0.1
    description: >-
      Fixes a failing cell and proves the fix by running it.

Each subagent needs either a ref or instructions of its own. The description is read by the delegating model when it decides whether to reach for this specialist, so write it for one.

Overrides

model, mcp_server and tools override what the referenced agent brings. For a member with no ref they are the definition.

See also

• Execution — how the members are run, and who decides
• Composition — subagents by reference, and why a reference beats a copy