| name | team-archetypes |
| description | Compose a team (of people OR agents) by lifecycle posture, not job title, using the five product archetypes — Prototyper, Builder, Sweeper, Grower, Maintainer — and the rule that a healthy mix depends on product stage. Use when deciding which agents/people to deploy on a project, diagnosing why a team or agent bundle feels lopsided (all builders, no maintainers), choosing what posture to take on a given piece of work, staffing a pre-PMF vs growing vs mature product, or selecting an agent mix in /7plan or /emerge. The team-composition complement to leverage-points: leverage-points says WHERE to intervene; this says WITH WHAT POSTURE. |
Team Archetypes — compose by posture, not by title
As engineering, product, design, and DS melt into a new kind of role, the durable unit of a team isn't the job function — it's the posture someone takes toward the work at a given stage. Boris Cherny (Claude Code) named five archetypes that recur across every function: the same person can be a Prototyper on one project and a Maintainer on another; a designer, an engineer, and a PM can each be any of the five. This skill is a lens for composing a team — of humans OR of AIOS agents — by archetype, matched to product stage.
The five archetypes
| # | Archetype | What they do | Posture |
|---|
| 1 | Prototyper | Churns out brand-new ideas; most don't ship | Generative, throwaway-tolerant, speed over polish |
| 2 | Builder | Turns a prototype/idea into production-grade product/infra | Hardening, end-to-end ownership |
| 3 | Sweeper | Simplifies code/systems, unships, optimizes, cleans UI | Subtractive, entropy-fighting |
| 4 | Grower | Iterates a built product to improve Product-Market Fit | Experiment-driven, metric-chasing |
| 5 | Maintainer | Owns a mature system: secure, reliable, fast, efficient at scale | Stewardship, operational rigor |
Most people (and most good agents) span 2–3 of these. Archetype is not tied to job function — it's a disposition toward the work.
The core move — match the mix to the stage
A healthy team needs a mix, and the right mix depends on where the product is:
| Product stage | Archetype mix it needs |
|---|
| New / pre-PMF | strong 1 + 2 + 3 (prototype, build, keep it simple) |
| Growing / found PMF | 2 + 3 + 4 + some 5 |
| Strong PMF / scaling | 3 + 4 + 5 + some 2 |
When you staff or compose for a project, name the stage first, then assemble the matching mix. A pre-PMF product staffed entirely with Maintainers will stall; a scaling product full of Prototypers will thrash.
The reframe that prevents the category error
Archetype is orthogonal to capability. Capability = what someone/an agent can do (review code, threat-model, research a market). Archetype = how/when they deploy it, matched to stage. The two multiply — they don't collapse.
- Don't rename your roles/agents to the five archetypes. That fuses two independent axes and destroys the capability information (a "Prototyper" of what?).
- Instead, tag each role/agent with the archetype(s) its posture can serve (1-to-many), and let the same unit shift posture by stage.
Applying it to AIOS agents
AIOS bundles agents by domain (sales / strategy / engineering / …). Archetype is the orthogonal posture layer on top. The engineering bundle maps roughly:
| Archetype | AIOS agent(s) | Posture-mode notes |
|---|
| Prototyper | technical-cofounder (prototype mode) | Throwaway-churn posture pre-PMF — explicitly not production-grade |
| Builder | technical-cofounder, aios-builder | Production-grade, end-to-end |
| Sweeper | refactor-engineer (+ code-reviewer, /simplify skill) | Simplify, unship, optimize — proactive entropy reduction on a mature codebase |
| Grower | growth-engineer | PMF-iteration on a shipped product — funnel, activation, retention, experiments |
| Maintainer | security-engineer, bug-triager, code-documenter | Reliability, security, docs-in-sync |
Coverage read: the engineering bundle now spans the full build → grow → maintain lifecycle. Prototyper is the one archetype with no dedicated agent — by design: it's a posture-mode of technical-cofounder (pre-PMF churn), not a missing capability. The rule it illustrates: fill a thin archetype with a posture-mode when the capability already exists, and a new agent only when a genuine capability is absent (as growth-engineer was) — never with a bundle restructure.
Three use-sites
- Agent/team selection —
/7plan (weekly: name each project's stage, check the planned work matches the stage-appropriate mix) and /emerge (archetype-coverage gap → agent suggestion). Not /today — daily task-routing is tactical; stage→mix is a strategic concern.
- Posture self-location (an agent reading this skill): a builder agent on a pre-PMF project takes the Prototyper posture (churn, throwaway, speed); on a scaling project, the Builder/Maintainer posture (hardening, rigor). Same agent, stage-appropriate posture.
- Project staging: tag each project (Active / Idea) with a lifecycle stage so the mix-check has an input.
Guardrails
- Don't restructure bundles around archetypes. Domain bundling works; archetype is a lens layered on top, not a replacement. Restructuring is churn against a taxonomy that already works.
- Don't manufacture five agents per domain. 5 archetypes × N domains is an explosion that re-buries the capability axis. Tag, don't multiply.
- A thin archetype = a capability question, not a naming question. "We have no Grower" means "we lack PMF-iteration capability," addressed via
/emerge → a new capability agent — not by relabeling an existing one.
Relationship to the rest of the system
Companion to leverage-points (where to intervene) and sustainable-cadence (at what pace). Worldview-neutral team science, like Meadows/Ostrom — it belongs to the invariant core, not a working-style template. Source: Boris Cherny on product-role archetypes.
