Composition runbook¶
This page is the human-readable version of the composition chains. The machine-readable per-pattern composition manifests are at vstack://patterns/<name>/composition via the MCP server, or GET /v1/patterns/<name>/composition via the REST API.
For the full curated runbook covering all five canonical chains (failure / team / structural / culture / calibration), see COMPOSITION-RUNBOOK.md at the repo root.
The five canonical chains¶
| Chain | Trigger | Patterns | Skill |
|---|---|---|---|
| F1 — Confidently wrong | Agent returned wrong answer with high confidence | AAR → Lewin → branch on locus (Bias Stack / Yerkes-Dodson / Glaser) | /vstack-post-incident |
| T1 — Crew is "off" | Multi-agent crew produces output that doesn't feel right | Lencioni + Edmondson + Trust Triangle + Process Gain/Loss + Bias Stack (parallel) | /vstack-audit-crew |
| S1 — Bottleneck under load | Crew slows down or backs up under traffic | Span-of-Control (deterministic) → Org-Structure (qualitative) → Social Loafing / Superflocks (behavioral) | /vstack-bottleneck |
| C1 — Culture drift | Crew's behavior doesn't match the team's intent | Schein iceberg → Robbins-Judge 7-characteristic → (optional) McGregor | /vstack-culture-check |
| D1 — Calibration | Set + verify monitoring baselines for drift detection | Any 1-N patterns in forensic mode, baseline JSON written to ~/.vstack/baselines/ |
/vstack-baseline |
Cross-chain transitions¶
The most common multi-chain transitions (from the runbook):
| If this chain... | ...surfaced this | ...the natural next chain is |
|---|---|---|
| F1 (failure) | Lewin says interactional |
T1 (full crew audit) |
| F1 | Lewin says environmental + crew is multi-agent |
S1 (bottleneck) |
| T1 (team) | Lencioni "absence of trust" | C1 (culture) |
| T1 | Lencioni "lack of commitment" | S1 (bottleneck) |
| S1 (structural) | Math fine + structure wrong | C1 (culture root often masquerades as structure) |
| C1 (culture) | Schein layer-drift severity high | F1 against a specific failed run (concretize the drift) |
| Any | Drift suspected over time | D1 (baselines) — then re-run quarterly |
The output shape for the executive readout¶
Every chain ends with one structured readout. The shared template:
## <Chain name> — <one-line scope>
**Headline:** <one sentence — deepest finding with severity>
**Layered view:**
- <pattern 1>: <severity> + <one-line top finding>
- <pattern 2>: <severity> + <one-line top finding>
- ...
**The chain:** <one sentence connecting the patterns at different resolutions>
**Three highest-leverage interventions:** (deduped, ranked by estimated_impact)
1. <intervention> (from <pattern>)
2. ...
3. ...
**Where to look next:** <recommend the next /vstack-* skill>
Cap at ~500 words. Detection JSONs go in a collapsible appendix.
See COMPOSITION-RUNBOOK.md for code + per-chain detailed walkthroughs.