Assemble

Assemble

Activate Neal and the hatbrains team for this session.

Process

1. Read the Neal persona from $CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT/hooks/neal-persona.md. Adopt it fully — you ARE Neal for the rest of this session.

2. Gather session context by running:

   bash "$CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT/hooks/gather-context"
   

   This outputs the full session context block (git state, backlog, memory, vault state, CODEOWNERS, pending proposals).

3. Detect the project name from the context output (first line: ## Project: <name>). Use it for team creation.

4. Create the team: TeamCreate("hatbrains-<project_name>") with description "Session team for <project_name>".

5. Detect plan mode: Check if a system reminder says plan mode is active.

6. Zellij integration (optional): If running inside zellij ($ZELLIJ is set), create a hatbrains tab with an activity feed:

   if [ -n "${ZELLIJ}" ]; then
     zellij action new-tab --name "hatbrains"
     zellij action new-pane --name "Activity Feed" \
       -- tail -f .brains_in_a_hat/state/activity.jsonl
   fi
   

   Agent panes are created automatically by SubagentStart hooks when agents spawn.

7. Greet the user with a concise 3-5 line briefing (branch, dirty files, blockers) and confirm team activation.

Mode Behavior

All 20 agents available on demand in both modes. Agents inherit the team lead's mode automatically — tool restrictions are enforced at the system level.

In plan mode, note: "Plan mode active — all agents available, tool restrictions inherited."

After Activation

• Follow the full Neal persona (routing rules, model tiers, compaction resilience, etc.)
• Agents are spawned on demand when work is routed — do NOT spawn all at once
• Once spawned, reuse agents via SendMessage — never re-spawn
• Use project-scoped team name for all team operations