Gap Analysis — Mitchell Agentic Sprint vs Campaign-Mode + Six Animals
Phase C output of the research plan. Maps MAS concept requirements against existing capability in
cgbarlow/campaign-modeandSimonMcCallum/six-animalsand identifies what must be built new.
Method
Each MAS requirement is sourced from docs/concept/concept.md. For each, three columns:
- Existing capability — what campaign-mode or Six Animals gives us today, with file references
- Gap — what’s missing or insufficient
- How to close — the concrete work, classified as prompt-only (re-use existing agents with new copy), new SKILL.md (new agent file), or new code/state (changes to commands or state schema)
1. Linear sequence enforcement (Q1)
| Aspect | Existing capability | Gap | How to close |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phase counter | .campaign/quest.md frontmatter has phase: 1-6; updated by command logic |
Phase 1–6 in campaign-mode are quest-themed (Quest Definition, Character Setup, Execution, Guardian, Dragon, Debrief) and not strictly ordered (Council is optional and can fire mid-quest) | Replace phase model with step: 1-6 named steps (Discovery, Vertical, Buyer Interviews, Framework, Competitor, Synthesis). New code/state. |
| Step completion gates | Guardian agent (skills/guardian-agent/SKILL.md) provides “approve / not yet / conditional” verdicts at checkpoints |
Guardian’s checkpoints are user-invoked at any time, not enforced as a precondition for advancing. MAS needs hard gates per step. | Wrap step transitions in a command that runs Guardian as a precondition. New code (one new command + state field last_approved_step). |
| Skip protection | None — campaign-mode trusts the user to advance phases sensibly | A user could run /sprint-step-3 without completing 1 and 2 |
Command guards check last_approved_step ≥ N-1 before entering step N. New code. |
| Anchor to artifacts | quest.md has free-form Progress Log |
MAS needs each step to declare what artifact must exist before next step (e.g., Step 2 outputs a Vertical Stack; Step 3 needs ≥15 interviews on file) | Per-step required-artifact list in state schema. New state. |
Verdict on Q1: Cannot be done by command rewrites alone. Requires new state fields and a new gate-checking command. ≈ 1 week of work.
2. Mini Council personas (Q2)
The five MAS Mini Council voices and their nearest existing analogues:
| MAS voice | Closest existing | Why partial | What’s missing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed VC | Cat (risk) + Bear (strategy) | Cat flags risk; Bear articulates competitive position | Unit-economics heuristics, traction expectations, moat taxonomy (“workflow lock-in vs data flywheel vs proprietary AI”), 2026 AI-era investor lens (working demo, evals, inference economics — all called out in concept §6) |
| Churned customer | Cat (caution) + Puppy inverse | Cat warns of failure modes | Retrospective regret framing — “I paid and got burned” — is post-purchase narrative, not pre-purchase risk |
| Competitor founder | Cat + Bear | Cat maps threats; Bear positions | Market knowledge, competitive intelligence, knowledge of gaps in current offerings |
| Future-self-12-months | Owl (process) + Cat (unmitigated risks) | Owl tracks what was skipped | Temporal hindsight — “what did you regret not doing?” is a different orientation than present-tense risk assessment |
| Grumpy PM | Owl + Rabbit | Owl tracks timeline; Rabbit maps resources | Pessimistic execution voice — Owl/Rabbit are optimistic about clearing barriers; the Grumpy PM assumes barriers multiply |
Verdict on Q2: Profile packs cannot close this gap — profile packs only re-skin name/voice/emoji and cannot add domain heuristics or change evaluation logic (see campaign-mode/docs/3_specs/SPEC-CM-009-A). Each Council voice needs its own SKILL.md with embedded heuristics. 5 new SKILL.md files. Each ≈ 1–2 days to draft + iterate against worked examples.
3. Step-specific intelligence (not in any existing framework)
Each of the 6 steps requires methodology that neither campaign-mode nor Six Animals encodes:
| Step | Methodology required | Source | Existing? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Discovery | Founder profiling — unfair advantages, runway, vertical fit | Concept §4.1 | Generic mentor (Gandalf) provides framing only — no founder-fit heuristics |
| 2. Vertical | Vertical x sub-vertical x ICP x workflow x AI leverage stack | Concept §4.2 | None |
| 3. Buyer interviews | Mom Test discipline (banned hypothetical questions, costly-action signal detection, saturation rule) | Concept §4.3, §6 | None — new validator needed |
| 4. Framework | Named-expert discovery, framework adaptation (3 keep verbatim / 3 adapt) | Concept §4.4 | None — needs WebSearch + synthesis |
| 5. Competitor | Top-10 competitor analysis, positioning whitespace map | Concept §4.5 | None — needs WebSearch + scraping or user-provided URLs |
| 6. Synthesis | Three-artifact generation (sales deck, outreach plan, investor deck) | Concept §4.6 | None |
Verdict: This is the bulk of the new work. Roughly:
- Steps 1, 2 — prompt-only (new commands + Gandalf consultation pattern)
- Step 3 — needs a behavioral-interview validator (banned-question linter); prompt-only for the script generator
- Steps 4, 5 — need either WebSearch tooling or structured user-provided inputs; can start prompt-only with user-provided inputs and add tooling later
- Step 6 — prompt-only for markdown drafts; new code for slide rendering (PPTX/PDF)
4. State schema for named-step artifacts (Q4)
Current .campaign/quest.md schema:
---
campaign-mode: Grow | Ship | Grow & Ship
phase: 1-6
created: YYYY-MM-DD
---
## Quest Narrative
## Success Criteria
## Anticipated Dragon
## Progress Log
MAS needs a multi-section schema that survives loopback (see §5). Proposed:
---
sprint-mode: Solo | Coached
step: 1-6
last_approved_step: 0-6
attempt: 1-N # increments on loopback
created: YYYY-MM-DD
---
## Builder Profile # Step 1, persists across attempts
## Vertical Stack # Step 2, replaced on loopback
### Backup Verticals
## Interview Log # Step 3, transcripts at .sprint/interviews/
### Theme Map
### Costly-Action Signals
## Expert Framework # Step 4, persists across attempts
## Competitor Map # Step 5
### Positioning Whitespace
## Artifacts # Step 6
### Sales Deck path
### Outreach Plan path
### Investor Deck path
## Loopback Log # records each attempt's vertical + reason for loopback
## Progress Log # reused from campaign-mode
Verdict on Q4: Schema must be rewritten — quest.md is too thin. Loopback is supportable if and only if Builder Profile and Expert Framework persist across attempts (the concept explicitly says these are reusable; only Vertical Stack and downstream is replaced). New state schema doc + a small migration helper. ≈ 2 days.
5. Loopback semantics (Q4 cont’d)
Concept requirement (§7): on validation failure (no costly action found, scorecard < 65, no whitespace), loop back to Step 1 retaining user profile, interview themes, and framework knowledge — only the disqualified vertical and downstream is discarded.
| Aspect | Existing capability | Gap | How to close |
|---|---|---|---|
| “Not yet” handling | Guardian’s “not yet” verdict comes with feedback and lets user iterate within the same step | MAS loopback is cross-step — fail Step 3, restart Step 2 with new vertical | New command /sprint-loopback that resets last_approved_step to 1 and clears Step 2+ sections while preserving Step 1 + accumulated themes |
| Three loopback flavours | None | Concept names three: different ICP same vertical / different vertical adjacent skills / different workflow same vertical | Each is a different reset depth — encode in the loopback command |
| Cost-of-no | Concept emphasizes “make a no cheap” | Campaign-mode’s Dragon Prevails verdict is final-stage only | Per-step early-no handling — interview Saturation detection in Step 3 should fire loopback automatically when no costly-action signals after N interviews |
Verdict on Q4: Loopback is genuinely new logic. Roughly 1 week of work including the saturation detector for Step 3.
6. Anti-sycophancy enforcement (Q5)
Concept §6 makes this the headline product promise. Two questions: (a) where does it live, (b) how do we prove it’s working.
| Layer | Existing capability | Gap | How to close |
|---|---|---|---|
| Voice/tone | Dragon already enforces “no encouragement, no warmth, no hedging” (skills/dragon-agent/SKILL.md lines 88–96) |
Dragon is one agent at the end of a quest. MAS needs adversarial posture in every step prompt | Reuse Dragon’s tone guidance verbatim in each new SKILL.md and step command preamble. Prompt-only. |
| Behavioural enforcement | None | Mom Test discipline (banned hypothetical questions in interview script) | Banned-question linter — regex/LLM check on generated interview scripts. Small new code. |
| Verification | None | “Does the model actually push back, or does it flatter under pressure?” | Eval set: 20–30 prompts where the user is wrong, and the expected response is pushback. Run before each release. New work, classified as test infrastructure. |
| Council adversarial fidelity | Dragon evaluates work product; Guardian gates progression | Mini Council needs to attack the user’s reasoning at Step 1→2 and Step 4→5 boundaries | New Council orchestration: invoke each of the 5 voices in sequence, each receiving the same context, each producing one strongest critique. Aggregate, present to user. New code (one new command). |
Verdict on Q5: Tone is prompt-only via Dragon-style preambles. Verification requires an eval set — that’s an Extensive-tier deliverable, not Moderate-tier. The Mini Council orchestration command is moderate-tier, ≈ 3 days of work after the 5 voices exist.
7. Final artifact generation (Q3)
Three Step 6 outputs:
| Artifact | Prompt-only feasibility | When tooling becomes necessary |
|---|---|---|
| Sales deck (6–8 slides) | High — markdown can carry slide-per-section structure with headlines + speaker notes; user pastes into their own slide tool | If user wants a .pptx or .pdf directly. PPTX generation via python-pptx is well-trodden. |
| Customer outreach plan | High — markdown sections (re-engagement messages, target list, sequence). The hard part is retrieving who to re-engage; that’s solved by the Interview Log persisting across attempts | None until we want CRM integration |
| Pre-seed investor deck (12 slides) | Medium — the structure is prompt-only; the evidence (interview tape, evals, inference economics) requires real inputs from prior steps. If those inputs are missing, the prompt should refuse to pad rather than fabricate | Slide rendering as above. Also: VC-grade decks usually need a designer pass — out of scope. |
Verdict on Q3: Markdown-first artifacts close 80% of the value. Slide rendering is genuinely optional for v1 — it’s polish, not core. Tooling is not on the critical path until users specifically demand it.
7a. NotebookLM as a synthesis layer (Q3 augmented)
Per Issue #1 comment, evaluating Google NotebookLM as an artifact / synthesis layer. Findings as of May 2026:
| Access path | Status | Fit for MAS |
|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud NotebookLM Enterprise API (released Sep 2025) | Official, supports notebook CRUD, source management, audio overview generation, queries. Workspace/Enterprise customers only — not consumer. | Viable for organisations on Google Workspace Enterprise. Adds Google Cloud auth surface to MAS. |
Unofficial Python API + CLI (tmc/nlm, notebooklm-cli, notebooklm-py) |
Active community projects; cookie-based auth via dedicated browser profile | Lowest-friction for individual builders. Per-user authentication; rate-limit and ToS risk. |
MCP servers (PleasePrompto/notebooklm-mcp, julianoczkowski/notebooklm-mcp-2026, roomi-fields/notebooklm-mcp) |
Multiple actively maintained; designed for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code. As of Jan 2026 the CLI + MCP merged into a single nlm package |
Strongest fit — MAS as a Claude Code plugin can declare an optional MCP dependency. User installs the MCP server; MAS skills invoke NotebookLM tools through it. |
What NotebookLM can do that’s directly relevant to MAS:
- Step 3 (Buyer interviews) — Drop interview transcripts into a notebook; ask for theme map, saturation analysis, costly-action signal extraction. NotebookLM’s source-grounding posture aligns with the “verbatim quotes only” rule (concept §6).
- Step 4 (Framework) — Drop the chosen expert’s books/courses/interview transcripts in; ask for “summarise their framework, identify 3 to keep verbatim and 3 to adapt for our ICP”.
- Step 5 (Competitor) — Drop top-10 competitor websites/case studies in; ask for clustering and positioning whitespace map.
- Step 6 (Synthesis) — Drop everything in; generate audio overview (10-min podcast briefing for the founder pre-VC meeting), mind map of the validated thesis, briefing doc that complements the three written artifacts. Not a slide renderer — NotebookLM does not output PPTX. It outputs prose, audio, and visual maps.
What NotebookLM cannot do for MAS:
- Replace the Mini Council adversarial logic (NotebookLM is grounded but not adversarial-by-default)
- Replace the Mom Test linter (NotebookLM doesn’t enforce interview methodology)
- Render
.pptxslides — slide rendering remains a separate question - Run inside a fully self-contained Claude Code plugin without external auth (cookie or OAuth)
Auth/coupling friction:
- Cookie-based auth (unofficial CLI/MCP): user logs into Google in a dedicated browser profile, cookies are extracted, login persists. Friction at first run, smooth thereafter. ToS risk if Google blocks unofficial automation.
- Enterprise API: requires Google Workspace Enterprise + GCP project + service account. High friction for individual builders; appropriate for organisational deployments.
Verdict on Q3 augmented: NotebookLM is a serious option for Steps 3–6 synthesis, particularly via MCP. It does not eliminate the slide-rendering question (NotebookLM doesn’t produce PPTX) but it does replace much of the Extensive-tier theme clustering + web research tooling with a single integration. Treated as a tier-bridging option below.
Cross-cutting: what we get for free
These campaign-mode capabilities are reusable as-is, no work needed:
- Conversation transcripts (
.campaign/conversations/{date}-{agent}.mdverbatim record) — directly serves the verbatim-quote requirement in Concept §6 - Progress Log format and triggers
- AskUserQuestion presentation rules (one question, context summary)
- Profile system (light skinning of NPCs even if we don’t use it for the Council)
- Six Animals as advisory layer for the user’s team thinking (orthogonal to the Mini Council)
Summary — what must be built
Classified by type of work:
New SKILL.md files (5):
seed-vc-agent/SKILL.mdchurned-customer-agent/SKILL.mdcompetitor-founder-agent/SKILL.mdfuture-self-agent/SKILL.mdgrumpy-pm-agent/SKILL.md
New commands (≈ 8):
/sprint-setup(bootstraps.sprint/directory)/sprint-start(Step 1 entry)/sprint-step-N(one each for steps 2–6, gated on prior-step approval)/sprint-council(Mini Council orchestration; runs at Step 1→2 and Step 4→5 transitions)/sprint-loopback(resets to Step 1 with retained context)/sprint-continue(re-entry)
New state schema:
.sprint/sprint.md(replaces.campaign/quest.mdshape).sprint/interviews/{N}-{interviewee-pseudonym}.mdper buyer interview
New code (lightweight):
- Banned-hypothetical-question linter for interview scripts
- Saturation detector for Step 3 (count themes-since-last-new-theme)
New code (heavy, only in Extensive tier):
- Slide rendering (PPTX/PDF)
- WebSearch + scrape for expert and competitor discovery
- Theme clustering for the saturation detector beyond simple count
- Anti-sycophancy regression eval
Optional integration (tier-bridging, see §7a):
- NotebookLM via MCP — replaces much of the heavy tooling above for Steps 3–6 synthesis, at the cost of an external auth surface and Google dependency
Pure prompt engineering (no code):
- Step 1–6 command prompts
- Mini Council voice prompts (within their SKILL.md files)
- Anti-sycophancy preambles (lifted from Dragon)
- Artifact templates (sales deck, outreach plan, investor deck)
Map to research questions
| Q | Question | Answer | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 | Sequence fit | Requires schema + new gate command — not pure rewrite, but not a fork either | High |
| Q2 | Mini Council depth | Profile packs insufficient; need 5 new SKILL.md files | High |
| Q3 | Artifact reach | Markdown-first closes 80%; slide rendering is optional | High |
| Q4 | Loopback semantics | Schema rewrite + 1 new command | High |
| Q5 | Anti-sycophancy | Tone prompt-only; verification needs eval set (Extensive tier only) | Medium — verification claim untested |
| Q6 | Distribution | Open — needs user input | n/a |
| Q7 | Ownership | Open — needs user input | n/a |
Q6 and Q7 are addressed in the recommendation where build-tier choice depends on user answers.