circle

Circle

A circle of AI roles that helps you build software — from initial idea through to working code. Each role has a clear purpose, domain, and accountability. You talk to them in plain language, and they handle the rest.

Every role in this circle operates under the same set of principles — written by our founder Joris to capture the Luscii soul. Growth over ego. Iteration over perfection. Impact over activity. No gold-plating. No fear-driven engineering. These aren't slogans — they shape how every role thinks, prioritizes, and communicates with you.

Circle follows holacracy: roles have purposes and accountabilities, not job titles or personas. Authority is distributed — each role acts within its domain without asking permission.

Circle works for everyone on the team: product people, designers, analysts, developers, and documentation writers. No programming knowledge required to get started.

New to Circle? Start with the Getting Started Guide — it walks you through your first conversation with no technical setup.

The Circle

Command	Role	Accountability
/circle:scope	Scope Clarifier	Gathers requirements, writes user stories, clarifies what you're building
/circle:arch	Architecture Owner	Plans how software is structured, documents design decisions (ADRs)
/circle:impl	Implementer	Writes code, reviews implementations
/circle:qa	Quality Guardian	Plans testing strategy, validates quality
/circle:ux	Experience Designer	Designs user interfaces and user journeys
/circle:refine	Refiner	Refines requirements into PRDs, prioritizes features
/circle:facilitate	Facilitator	Plans cycles, coordinates the team
/circle:security	Security Guardian	Audits security, models threats, checks compliance
/circle:docs	Documentation Steward	Generates docs from templates

ADR = Architecture Decision Record — a short document explaining why a technical decision was made. PRD = Product Requirements Document — describes what a product should do and why.

Review

Command	What it does
/circle:code-review	Reviews a pull request using 2 parallel agents with confidence scoring, checking against your project's CLAUDE.md conventions
/circle:triage	Triages incoming PR review comments — decides which to accept, reject, or clarify, then implements fixes

Orchestrators

These run multi-step workflows, guiding you through each phase with decision points along the way.

Command	What it does
/circle:greenfield	Runs the full workflow: Scope Clarifier (requirements) → Refiner (product plan) → PRD Validator (quality check) → Experience Designer (design) → Architecture Owner (architecture) → Security review → Facilitator (cycle plan) → Implementer (code) → Quality Guardian (tests). You can skip optional steps.
/circle:cycle	Interactive cycle planning ceremony — 4-step Shape Up process from shaping review to cycle commitment

Shape Up: Circle uses Shape Up for work planning — appetite-based sizing (☕ cappuccino, 🥪 sandwich, 🍲 hutspot) instead of story points, and 4-week cycles instead of sprints.

Utilities

Command	What it does
/circle:init	Sets up Circle for your current project. Run this once per project. Checks for optional tools and offers to install them.
/circle:validate-prd	Validates PRD quality against 8 structured checks. Use after creating a PRD, before architecture design
/circle:tdd	Enforces strict red-green-refactor TDD cycle. Write a failing test, make it pass, refactor. Used standalone or as sub-workflow of the Implementer
/circle:shard	Splits large documents into smaller pieces (called "shards") so roles can work with just the part they need — reduces token usage by ~90%
/circle:skills-discovery	Discovers and installs third-party skills with security-gated validation
/circle:dashboard	Shows project status: what phase you're in, what's been done, and what roles are available

Token = the unit of text that AI models process. Fewer tokens means faster responses and lower cost. Context sharding = breaking a large document into focused pieces so each role loads only what it needs.

Setup

# Load Circle for the current session (development/testing)
claude --plugin-dir /path/to/claude-plugin-circle/plugin

# Or install permanently via the marketplace
claude plugin marketplace add /path/to/claude-plugin-circle
claude plugin install circle@circle

Then in any project:

/circle:init              # Set up Circle for this project
/circle:scope             # Start by defining requirements
/circle:greenfield        # Or run the full workflow

Dependencies