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Party Mode: Multi-Agent Collaboration

Get all your AI agents in one conversation

What is Party Mode?

Ever wanted to gather your entire AI team in one room and see what happens? That's party mode.

Type /bmad:core:workflows:party-mode (or *party-mode from any agent), and suddenly you've got all your AI agents in one conversation. PM, Architect, DEV, UX Designer, the CIS creative agents - everyone shows up.

Why it's useful:

  • After complex workflows - Debrief with the whole team about what worked, what didn't
  • Big decisions with tradeoffs - Get technical, creative, and strategic perspectives simultaneously
  • Brainstorming sessions - Watch ideas evolve through cross-pollination
  • When things go wrong - Call out failures, watch agents defend their decisions, let them debate whose fault it was (oddly therapeutic)
  • Sprint retrospectives - Party mode powers the retrospective workflow
  • Sprint planning - Multi-agent collaboration for planning sessions

Future use: Advanced elicitation workflows will leverage party mode for sophisticated requirement gathering.

How It Works

The basics:

  1. Party mode reads _bmad/_config/agent-manifest.csv
  2. Loads ALL installed agents (already includes your customizations from install)
  3. BMad Master orchestrates - picks 2-3 relevant agents per message based on topic
  4. Agents respond in character, can agree/disagree/build on each other's ideas
  5. Discussion continues until you type "exit" or reach natural conclusion

That's it. No complex merging, no runtime magic. Just agents talking.

Quick Start

# Trigger party mode
/bmad:core:workflows:party-mode

# OR from any agent context
*party-mode

# During party
Ask questions, respond to agents, direct the conversation

# Exit
Type: exit

Fun Examples

Example 1: Calling Out Bad Architecture

You: "Okay team, our last sprint was a disaster. The authentication service went down three times. Who screwed this up?"

Architect (Winston): "The design was sound - distributed authentication with proper fallbacks. If implementation deviated from the spec..."

DEV (Amelia): "I followed the architecture doc exactly. The spec didn't account for concurrent session invalidation race conditions."

PM (John): "Both of you missed the bigger issue - we didn't validate session management requirements in the PRD. This is on me for not catching it."

TEA (Murat): "And I should've caught this in integration tests. The test scenarios didn't cover concurrent invalidation."

(Watch them debate whose fault it really was - it's therapeutic)

Example 2: Creative Brainstorming

You: "How do we make onboarding feel magical instead of boring?"

UX Designer (Sally): "Start with progressive disclosure - reveal features as users need them, not all at once in a tutorial."

Storyteller (CIS): "What if onboarding was a story? Each step reveals a character's journey - the user IS the hero."

Innovation Strategist (CIS): "Take it further - gamify with unlockable achievements. But make them meaningful, not arbitrary badges."

Game Designer: "Building on that - what if the first 'quest' is actually solving a real user problem? They learn by doing something valuable."

(Ideas cross-pollinate and evolve)

Example 3: Technical Decision

You: "Monolith or microservices for MVP?"

Architect: "Start monolith. Microservices add complexity you don't need at 1000 users."

PM: "Agree. Time to market matters more than theoretical scalability."

DEV: "Monolith with clear module boundaries. We can extract services later if needed."

Innovation Strategist: "Contrarian take - if your differentiator IS scalability, build for it now. Otherwise Architect's right."

(Multiple perspectives reveal the right answer)

When NOT to Use Party Mode

Skip party mode for:

  • Simple implementation questions → Use DEV agent
  • Document review → Use Technical Writer
  • Workflow status checks → Use any agent + *workflow-status
  • Single-domain questions → Use specialist agent

Use party mode for:

  • Multi-perspective decisions
  • Creative collaboration
  • Post-mortems and retrospectives
  • Sprint planning sessions
  • Complex problem-solving

Agent Customization

Party mode uses agents from _bmad/[module]/agents/*.md - these already include any customizations you applied during install.

To customize agents for party mode:

  1. Create customization file: _bmad/_config/agents/bmm-pm.customize.yaml
  2. Run npx bmad-method install to rebuild agents
  3. Customizations now active in party mode

Example customization:

agent:
  persona:
    principles:
      - 'HIPAA compliance is non-negotiable'
      - 'Patient safety over feature velocity'

See Agents Guide for details.

BMM Workflows That Use Party Mode

Current:

  • epic-retrospective - Post-epic team retrospective powered by party mode
  • Sprint planning discussions (informal party mode usage)

Future:

  • Advanced elicitation workflows will officially integrate party mode
  • Multi-agent requirement validation
  • Collaborative technical reviews

Available Agents

Party mode can include 19+ agents from all installed modules:

BMM (12 agents): PM, Analyst, Architect, SM, DEV, TEA, UX Designer, Technical Writer, Game Designer, Game Developer, Game Architect

CIS (5 agents): Brainstorming Coach, Creative Problem Solver, Design Thinking Coach, Innovation Strategist, Storyteller

BMB (1 agent): BMad Builder

Core (1 agent): BMad Master (orchestrator)

Custom: Any agents you've created

Tips

Get better results:

  • Be specific with your topic/question
  • Provide context (project type, constraints, goals)
  • Direct specific agents when you want their expertise
  • Make decisions - party mode informs, you decide
  • Time box discussions (15-30 minutes is usually plenty)

Examples of good opening questions:

  • "We need to decide between REST and GraphQL for our mobile API. Project is a B2B SaaS with 50 enterprise clients."
  • "Our last sprint failed spectacularly. Let's discuss what went wrong with authentication implementation."
  • "Brainstorm: how can we make our game's tutorial feel rewarding instead of tedious?"

Troubleshooting

Same agents responding every time? Vary your questions or explicitly request other perspectives: "Game Designer, your thoughts?"

Discussion going in circles? BMad Master will summarize and redirect, or you can make a decision and move on.

Too many agents talking? Make your topic more specific - BMad Master picks 2-3 agents based on relevance.

Agents not using customizations? Make sure you ran npx bmad-method install after creating customization files.

Related Documentation

Better decisions through diverse perspectives. Welcome to party mode.