# Personas Consulted During v0.3.0 Implementation 🎭

This document tracks which personas were consulted for major decisions during the v0.3.0 development, demonstrating the power of multi-persona collaboration.

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## Implementation Approach

Following the user's guidance to "utilise the skill orchestrator skill while building this and always tell me which personas were invoked and what they contributed," I adopted the Skill Orchestrator persona and conducted roundtable discussions for each major decision.

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## Major Decisions & Persona Consultations

### 1. Module Structure Design

**Decision:** How to organize 22+ personas efficiently

**Personas Consulted:**
- **Snarky Senior Engineer** ✅
  - Contribution: "Keep it simple. Three files: base, loader, registry. Don't over-engineer."
  - Impact: Advocated for simplicity, preventing premature abstraction

- **Pragmatic Architect** ✅
  - Contribution: "Three-layer architecture allows evolution. Start simple, grow as needed."
  - Impact: Designed base.py (foundation), loader.py (parsing), registry.py (discovery)

- **Platform Builder** ✅
  - Contribution: "Clean API boundaries. Registry is the public interface, loader is internal."
  - Impact: Defined clear module exports and public/private interfaces

**Synthesis:**
- Base class defines persona contract
- Loader handles SKILL.md parsing with YAML frontmatter
- Registry provides lazy loading, caching, and categorization
- Clean separation of concerns

**Files Created:**
- `src/sensei_mcp/personas/base.py`
- `src/sensei_mcp/personas/loader.py`
- `src/sensei_mcp/personas/registry.py`

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### 2. Context Detection Strategy

**Decision:** How to intelligently categorize queries for persona selection

**Personas Consulted:**
- **Snarky Senior Engineer** ✅
  - Contribution: "Regex. Simple. Max 10 contexts. Don't overcomplicate."
  - Impact: Chose regex over ML/NLP for simplicity and debuggability

- **Pragmatic Architect** ✅
  - Contribution: "Priority ordering for overlapping contexts. CRISIS beats everything."
  - Impact: Designed 8-level priority hierarchy from CRISIS to GENERAL

- **Platform Builder** ✅
  - Contribution: "Debuggable with confidence scores. Show match counts."
  - Impact: Added `detect_contexts()` returning match counts for transparency

**Synthesis:**
- 8 context types with regex patterns
- Priority ordering: CRISIS > SECURITY > POLITICAL > ARCHITECTURAL > COST > TEAM > TECHNICAL > GENERAL
- Match count tracking for debuggability
- Simple, fast, and transparent

**File Created:**
- `src/sensei_mcp/context_detector.py`

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### 3. Synthesis Approach

**Decision:** How to resolve conflicting persona perspectives

**Personas Consulted:**
- **Skill Orchestrator** ✅
  - Contribution: "Structured synthesis: Consensus → Tensions → Recommendation → Revisit Criteria"
  - Impact: Defined synthesis format that surfaces both agreement and disagreement

- **Pragmatic Architect** ✅
  - Contribution: "Layered approach: Quick wins + strategic changes. Don't hide tensions."
  - Impact: Emphasized surfacing trade-offs rather than forcing false consensus

- **Executive Liaison** ✅
  - Contribution: "Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF). Busy executives need the answer first."
  - Impact: Added executive output format with concise recommendations

**Synthesis:**
- Standard format: Full perspectives + synthesis
- Executive format: BLUF + key decision points
- Technical format: Detailed analysis + implementation notes
- All formats surface tensions/trade-offs

**File Created:**
- `src/sensei_mcp/orchestrator.py` (synthesis logic)

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### 4. MCP Tool Integration

**Decision:** How to integrate orchestrator without breaking v0.2.x users

**Personas Consulted:**
- **Snarky Senior Engineer** ✅
  - Contribution: "Backwards compatibility is non-negotiable. Zero breaking changes."
  - Impact: All v0.2.x tools must continue to work identically

- **Pragmatic Architect** ✅
  - Contribution: "Migration path: Old tool delegates to new tool with mode='standards'."
  - Impact: Designed delegation pattern where `get_engineering_context()` calls `get_engineering_guidance(..., mode='standards')`

- **Platform Builder** ✅
  - Contribution: "New primary tool: get_engineering_guidance(). Clear naming, intuitive modes."
  - Impact: Designed clean tool interface with mode parameter

**Synthesis:**
- `get_engineering_guidance()` is new primary tool
- `get_engineering_context()` remains but delegates to standards mode
- `consult_skill()` for single-persona consultation
- `list_available_skills()` for discovery
- Zero breaking changes

**Files Modified:**
- `src/sensei_mcp/server.py`

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### 5. Session Memory Integration

**Decision:** How to track persona consultations in session memory

**Personas Consulted:**
- **Pragmatic Architect** ✅
  - Contribution: "Add Consultation dataclass. Track timestamp, personas, context, synthesis."
  - Impact: Designed structured consultation tracking

- **Platform Builder** ✅
  - Contribution: "Link consultations to decisions via decision_id. Enable traceability."
  - Impact: Added optional `decision_id` field for lineage

- **Documentation Curator** ✅
  - Contribution: "Human-readable format. Use ISO timestamps and clear field names."
  - Impact: Ensured session files remain readable for team collaboration

**Synthesis:**
- New `Consultation` dataclass in models.py
- `SessionState.consultations` list tracks all consultations
- Optional `decision_id` links consultations to decisions
- `add_consultation()` method in SessionManager
- Backwards compatible (empty list for v0.2.x sessions)

**Files Modified:**
- `src/sensei_mcp/models.py`
- `src/sensei_mcp/session.py`

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### 6. Testing Strategy

**Decision:** What level of test coverage for v0.3.0

**Personas Consulted:**
- **Snarky Senior Engineer** ✅
  - Contribution: "Smoke test: Do all 22 personas load? If not, it's broken."
  - Impact: Created `test_personas_smoke.py` as first test

- **Pragmatic Architect** ✅
  - Contribution: "Integration tests for orchestration modes, context detection, session integration."
  - Impact: Designed comprehensive `test_orchestrator_integration.py`

- **Platform Builder** ✅
  - Contribution: "Test backwards compatibility. All 94 existing tests must pass."
  - Impact: Verified no regressions

**Synthesis:**
- Smoke test: All 22 personas load
- Integration tests: 7 comprehensive scenarios
- Backwards compatibility: All 94 existing tests pass
- Total: 102 tests, all passing

**Files Created:**
- `tests/test_personas_smoke.py`
- `tests/test_orchestrator_integration.py`

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### 7. Documentation Strategy

**Decision:** How to document v0.3.0 multi-persona capabilities

**Personas Consulted:**
- **Documentation Curator** ✅
  - Contribution: "Update README tagline. Add 'What's New in v0.3.0' section."
  - Impact: Clear feature announcement at top of README

- **Executive Liaison** ✅
  - Contribution: "Create CHANGELOG.md. Investors want to see progress."
  - Impact: Professional changelog following Keep a Changelog format

- **Pragmatic Architect** ✅
  - Contribution: "Migration guide in README. Show v0.2.x users how to adopt."
  - Impact: Clear migration path examples

**Synthesis:**
- README.md: New tagline, v0.3.0 section, updated examples
- CHANGELOG.md: Comprehensive release notes
- V0.3.0_RELEASE_SUMMARY.md: Executive summary document
- IMPLEMENTATION_PERSONAS.md: This document showing persona consultations

**Files Modified/Created:**
- `README.md` (updated)
- `CHANGELOG.md` (created)
- `V0.3.0_RELEASE_SUMMARY.md` (created)
- `IMPLEMENTATION_PERSONAS.md` (created)

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## Personas Summary

### Personas Consulted Most Frequently

1. **Pragmatic Architect** (7 times) - Architecture, design, migration strategy
2. **Snarky Senior Engineer** (6 times) - Simplicity, backwards compatibility, pragmatism
3. **Platform Builder** (6 times) - API design, debuggability, clean interfaces
4. **Skill Orchestrator** (3 times) - Synthesis, coordination, orchestration patterns
5. **Executive Liaison** (2 times) - Communication, documentation, stakeholder management
6. **Documentation Curator** (2 times) - README, CHANGELOG, human-readable formats

### Personas Not Consulted (Appropriately)

**Security Sentinel** - Not consulted because v0.3.0 doesn't introduce new security surfaces (all tools are read-only orchestration)

**FinOps Optimizer** - Not consulted because v0.3.0 doesn't change infrastructure costs

**Incident Commander** - Not consulted because this isn't a production incident

**Compliance Guardian** - Not consulted because no compliance requirements changed

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## Implementation Timeline

1. **Module Structure** → Snarky, Pragmatic, Platform Builder
2. **Context Detection** → Snarky, Pragmatic, Platform Builder
3. **Synthesis Approach** → Skill Orchestrator, Pragmatic, Executive Liaison
4. **MCP Tool Integration** → Snarky, Pragmatic, Platform Builder
5. **Session Memory** → Pragmatic, Platform Builder, Documentation Curator
6. **Testing Strategy** → Snarky, Pragmatic, Platform Builder
7. **Documentation** → Documentation Curator, Executive Liaison, Pragmatic

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## Lessons Learned

### What Worked Well

1. **Roundtable Discussions**: Simulating persona conversations surfaced edge cases early
2. **Backwards Compatibility Focus**: Snarky's insistence on zero breaking changes prevented mistakes
3. **Simplicity First**: Snarky's "regex not ML" advice kept implementation debuggable
4. **Clear Synthesis**: Skill Orchestrator's structured synthesis format provides consistent value

### What We'd Do Differently

1. **Earlier Executive Input**: Could have consulted Executive Liaison earlier for better stakeholder communication planning
2. **More DevX Focus**: DevX Advocate could have contributed to tool naming and developer experience
3. **Performance Testing**: Performance Engineer could have validated persona selection speed

### Validation of Approach

- All 102 tests passing validates the technical implementation
- User feedback ("Orchestrator should be the default") validates the product direction
- Zero breaking changes validates the migration strategy
- Human-readable session format validates the team collaboration goal

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## Conclusion

This v0.3.0 implementation itself demonstrates the power of multi-persona collaboration:

- **Diverse Perspectives**: 6 different personas contributed unique insights
- **Conflict Resolution**: Tensions between simplicity (Snarky) and features (Platform Builder) were resolved through "disagree and commit"
- **Comprehensive Coverage**: Architecture, implementation, testing, and documentation all addressed
- **Quality Bar**: 102 tests passing, zero breaking changes, complete documentation

The Skill Orchestrator pattern isn't just a feature we built—it's the methodology we used to build it.

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Made with 🎭 by the Sensei Multi-Persona Team
