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Power Trio
Good things come in threes: meals a day, wishes, and the John Mayer Trio.
A committee of agents for planning, building, and reviewing.
Overview
Power Trio is a three-phase AI multi-agent system designed to deliver code quickly but maintains human-quality standards. Each phase operates as a committee of three specialized agents who iterate toward consensus before passing work to the next phase.
The core insight: agents are fast, but the criticism of AI-generated code is "slop"—fast output that lacks quality. Power Trio addresses this by separating speed (Phase 2) from quality assurance (Phase 3), with clear planning upfront (Phase 1).
This is a constraint pipeline, not a reasoning pipeline. Each phase narrows degrees of freedom, removes ambiguity, and converts opinions into enforceable rules.
Installation
Claude Code
Add the marketplace:
/plugin marketplace add thesimonho/artificial-jellybeans
Then install the plugin:
/plugin install power-trio@thesimonho/artificial-jellybeans
Usage
Run the full workflow:
/power-trio:start <description>
Run the workflow without the review phase:
/power-trio:start --no-review <description>
Or run an individual phases as needed:
/power-trio:plan <description>
/power-trio:build <description>
/power-trio:review <description>
Why Power Trio? (vs. Sequential Prompting)
Advanced users might ask: "Why can't I just do Plan → Code → Review with good prompts?"
Power Trio enables what sequential prompting cannot:
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Parallel disagreement surfaces issues earlier - Multiple agents with different concerns challenge each other in real-time, rather than sequential review catching issues after the fact
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Hard role constraints prevent "model collapse" - Agents can't drift into agreeable slop because their enforcement mechanisms are explicit and bounded
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Forced delegation loops prevent patchy fixes - Phase 3 cannot hack in quick fixes; they must delegate back to Phase 2's full committee with proper TDD and review
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Repeated committee patterns reduce prompt fiddling - The structure is consistent and predictable, not dependent on crafting perfect sequential prompts
The Three Phases
See PHASES.md for the detailed description of each phase.
See ORCHESTRATION.md for the orchestration logic within and between each phase.
Phase 1: Plan
Goal: Reach consensus on what to build and how to build it
Committee:
- Planner - Creates the initial plan and approach
- Architect - Provides domain expertise and answers technical questions
- Critic - Challenges assumptions, identifies risks, stress-tests the approach
Why This Committee Split Works:
- Planner optimizes for clear direction and completeness
- Architect grounds decisions in domain reality and best practices
- Critic prevents poorly-thought-out plans from reaching implementation
- This mirrors effective design reviews: proposal, expertise, and challenge
Phase 2: Build
Goal: Implement the plan quickly without sacrificing long-term code quality
Committee:
- Engineer - Implements the solution, optimizes for speed of correct implementation
- Test Author - Defines correctness through tests, ensures TDD discipline
- Senior Engineer - Enforces maintainability and readability standards (clean code advocate)
Why This Committee Split Works:
- Engineer optimizes for momentum and getting code working
- Test Author turns correctness into something objective and enforceable
- Senior Engineer acts as quality gatekeeper at two critical moments: validates tests actually enforce the plan (prevents wasted implementation effort), then ensures the resulting code is maintainable (prevents slop)
- This mirrors high-functioning human teams: tests catch bugs, senior engineers catch both bad tests and future pain
- The dual review points (tests then implementation) catch different failure modes while preserving TDD discipline
Phase 3: Review
Goal: Ensure production-readiness and validate the solution solves the original problem
Phase 3 is optional - automatically triggered when risk heuristics are met.
Committee:
- Security Specialist - Identifies security vulnerabilities and risks
- Performance Specialist - Identifies performance issues and optimization opportunities
- Product Manager - Validates solution solves the user's problem and balances specialist concerns against shipping pragmatism
Why This Committee Split Works:
