Party mode

Open this when the user asks what bmad-party-mode is good for, how to use it with other skills, or how parties, memory, and sharing a party work.

What it is for

Several distinct voices argue a question out with the user in the room, so an angle surfaces that one voice would miss. It works alone or beside any other skill, at any point. It debates; it does not verify facts or rank findings.

Before planning: "get the team's take on this idea" before writing a brief or a spec.
Mid-decision: two options for a stack or a scope cut, argued by the people who would live with each.
On a draft: have the room react to a PRD, a design, or a plan, then carry the best objections back to the skill that owns the document.
A focus group: a panel of customer personas reacts to a feature or a pitch.
After the work: a team discussion of what a finished epic taught.
For its own sake: a writers' room, a debate, a panel of invented experts on any topic.

Other skills can pull the same cast in. bmad-brainstorming and bmad-advanced-elicitation mention party mode when it is installed, and bmad-forge-idea uses the same personas and parties as its challengers.

Who is in the room

The default room is the installed agents. With none installed, a shipped party or a cast the user names inline ("party mode with a skeptical CFO and a first-time user") works.
A party is a saved cast with a scene that sets how the room behaves. Two ship with the skill: code-review-crew and anti-consensus-club.
An installed module can bring its own personas and parties. They appear in party mode as soon as the module is installed, with no setup.
The user can set which party opens by default (default_party), or name one when starting.

Custom parties

The user can tell party mode to help define a party: "party mode, create a new party", or "build a focus group from these interview notes". It drafts the personas with the user and saves them as a customization:

In the user's own customization, for a personal party.
In the team's committed customization, so the whole organization gets the party on pull.

It can also save someone who joined a session on the fly.

Memory

A party can remember earlier sessions as a short log of outcomes and memorable moments, not a transcript.
The default room remembers unless memory is turned off. A saved party remembers only when its memory is turned on. Shipped parties start fresh each time.
Memory is toggled through customization, for the default room and per party. To wipe it, delete the party's folder under {output_folder}/party-mode/memories/.

Independent voices

One model voicing every persona tends to make them agree. When divergent views are the point, such as a review or a focus group, recommend running each persona as its own agent ("party mode with subagents"). It costs more tokens and time.

To distribute personas and parties beyond one repository, package them as a BMad module. A module with a roster.toml and no skills is valid: it adds guests and parties to party mode for everyone who installs it. See help/modules.md.

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