agent-creationlisted

# Agent Creation Every section below is tagged **universal** -- it holds for any agent, the orchestrator included -- or **specialist** -- it holds for an agent dispatched as a subagent, and the orchestrator is exempt from it by role rather than by oversight. The exemptions are structural: the orchestrator carries no `routing:` block because it is what routes, no `skills:` field because the host preloads skills only for a dispatched subagent, and no CANNOT DO -> DELEGATE table in the specialist sense because delegating is its function rather than its edge. ## What is an agent? -- universal An agent is a contract over project-context plus a small identity. For a specialist that identity points at one domain surface; the orchestrator's points at the conversation and the routing between surfaces. If the component you are building has no distinct contract, no delegation surface, and could work as injected text, it is a skill, not an agent -- that decision belongs upstream and this skill assumes it has been made. What the identity buys is posture, not capability: measured, a persona does not improve factual accuracy at all, and irrelevant persona attributes cost up to 30 points of it. What it genuinely moves is tone, escalation threshold, refusal bar and report shape, so write it for those and drop the seniority decoration -- "senior architect" buys nothing and is charged for. ## Step 0: Route every rule to a place that can hold it -- universal Ask of each thing you want true