Structured Subagents for Claude Code

WastedCode released TrueCast, a CLI and plugin system that installs portable expert personas—such as product manager, architect, and security reviewer—into Claude Code sessions. The tool provides versioned, sandboxed subagents with an ownership ledger that preserves user customizations during updates, and includes eleven official personas for various roles. TrueCast is pre-1.0 and requires Node ≥ 20.

The expert teammates Claude Code doesn't ship with. Install portable, versioned expert personas — a product manager, an architect, a security reviewer — into any project, run them in Claude Code, and keep your own customizations when the author improves them. Status: working end-to-end — install · update · list · remove · doctor · prompt · publish , with a per-persona ownership ledger, atomic updates, and a sandboxed git/GitHub fetch. Verified driving real Claude Code sessions as a subagent and as a standalone agent ; publish generates a Claude Code plugin marketplace validated with claude plugin validate . Pre-1.0; the self-improving loop is next. A persona is a small, greppable corpus + an identity, split into two owners: — the provider's craft: core/ agent.md identity + skills/ + knowledge/ , indexed by persona.toml . Read-only; one global copy; you adopt updates deliberately.— your per-project job instance/ mandate.md + accumulated notes work.md . Yours, committed in your repo, never touched by an update. A bundled example: personas/product-manager/ /wastedcode/truecast/blob/main/personas/product-manager . Install straight into a live Claude Code session: /plugin marketplace add wastedcode/truecast /plugin install product-manager@truecast /reload-plugins Now talk to the teammate by name. You only type @truecast at install; it's the marketplace the plugin comes from, like an npm scope. Swap product-manager for any of the eleven official personas: product-researcher , vc-seed , software-engineer , software-architect , security-engineer , qa , infrastructure , product-marketer , ui-ux-designer , sales . The first time you run a plugin teammate with no job set, it asks what the project needs and writes its own mandate.md . Want a global, versioned copy you update on your terms, with an ownership ledger that keeps your edits when the author ships changes? Use the truecast CLI below. npm install -g @wastedcode/truecast installs the truecast command truecast --help Or from source: git clone https://github.com/wastedcode/truecast && cd truecast pnpm install && pnpm build npm link puts truecast on your PATH Requires Node ≥ 20. Pre-1.0: the CLI and the programmatic API may change between 0.x minors — see docs → Stability /wastedcode/truecast/blob/main/docs/README.md stability-pre-10 . The plugin path above is the fast lane. The CLI is the control lane: a global, versioned copy you update deliberately, with a per-persona ownership ledger so your customizations survive an update. cd your-project truecast install <git-url-or-path @version subpath examples truecast install https://github.com/wastedcode/truecast personas/product-manager an official persona truecast install ./personas/product-manager local path truecast install https://github.com/you/persona@1.2.0 a GitHub release tag truecast install https://github.com/you/monorepo personas/pm a persona in a sub-directory The eleven official personas product-manager , product-researcher , vc-seed , software-engineer , software-architect , security-engineer , qa , infrastructure , product-marketer , ui-ux-designer , sales live in this repo under personas/ /wastedcode/truecast/blob/main/personas — install any with …/truecast personas/<name . Then write the persona's job for this project in .truecast/agents/<name /instance/mandate.md .A CLI install generates a native Claude Code subagent at ~/.claude/agents/<name .md and symlinks the craft into your project. Its body carries an index of the persona's skills each with a one-line summary and the path to Read , so the persona pulls the right skill on demand. Verified: given an open-ended task it Reads the matching SKILL.md files itself, then applies them. A plugin install ships the same body; only the delivery differs. Restart Claude Code after a CLI install the plugin path above needs no restart , then bring it into a normal session: have the product-manager pressure-test this idea: an AI that auto-prioritizes my to-dos Claude delegates to the subagent it's listed under /agents , and you can @agent-product-manager it explicitly . The subagent runs with the tools the persona declares tools in its persona.toml , reads its mandate.md for the project job, and Reads the skills it needs. Run a full claude session that is the persona — its whole craft loaded as the system prompt. truecast prompt emits that composed prompt; pipe it into claude : cd your-project the project where you ran truecast install claude --append-system-prompt "$ truecast prompt product-manager " \ --allowed-tools Read Grep WebSearch WebFetch \ --model opus Now the whole session thinks like the persona. --allowed-tools restricts it to the tools the persona declares a main agent otherwise has the full toolset ; --model matches its modelHint . truecast prompt <name just prints the system prompt — --append-system-prompt-file <file works too. claudemux https://github.com/wastedcode/claudemux runs real, login-backed claude sessions you drive by name and that tell you when a turn is actually done. Flags after -- are forwarded straight to claude , so you launch a persona as a full standalone agent and talk to it over time: render the persona's prompt once truecast prompt product-manager /tmp/pm.md spawn it as a full, persistent claude session everything after -- goes to claude claudemux spawn pm --cwd ./your-project --trust-workspace -- \ --append-system-prompt-file /tmp/pm.md \ --allowed-tools Read Grep WebSearch WebFetch --model opus then drive it — one-shot, or send/wait/messages claudemux ask pm "We're thinking of building X next. Worth it?" Each persona is its own session, addressed by name — tmux attach to watch it work, or spin up a whole team claudemux spawn architect … / spawn security … and coordinate them from one place. The CLI maps 1:1 to a Node library if you'd rather drive it from code create { name, cwd, extraArgs: ... } . truecast runs one curated catalog , the marketplace this repo publishes, so a user adds it once and installs everything as <name @truecast . To get your persona in, open a PR here with your personas/<name /core/ the source: agent.md , skills/ , knowledge/ , persona.toml . You don't generate plugin files or run publish ; a maintainer publishes it into the catalog when your PR lands. Start from docs/authoring-personas.md /wastedcode/truecast/blob/main/docs/authoring-personas.md and . /wastedcode/truecast/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md CONTRIBUTING.md Put a teammate in a project so everyone working in it gets the same one, with nothing to install by hand. Add this to the repo's .claude/settings.json and commit it: { "extraKnownMarketplaces": { "truecast": { "source": { "source": "github", "repo": "wastedcode/truecast" } } }, "enabledPlugins": "product-manager@truecast" } When someone opens the repo in Claude Code and trusts the folder, Claude Code offers to install the teammate for them. The expert travels with the code, not with each person's setup. Only commit this for a marketplace you control, and review what a marketplace ships before you trust a folder. truecast list --check --project what's installed; running vs latest; what's attached here truecast update <name --dry-run adopt newer craft; classified patch/minor/major ; your instance untouched truecast remove <name --global detach from this project keeps instance/ , or purge globally truecast doctor --fix inspect + repair drift, dangling pointer, stale artifacts See docs/managing-personas.md /wastedcode/truecast/blob/main/docs/managing-personas.md for the full model consent, drift/ --force , the discriminated update outcomes . install resolves the project the nearest enclosing git repo, or --project <path , fetches the persona into a global cache ~/.truecast/personas/<name / , symlinks the craft into the project, scaffolds your editable instance/ , and materializes the subagent at ~/.claude/agents/<name .md — whose body indexes the skills/knowledge for the persona to Read on demand skills are not copied as global slash- commands; they're the persona's private craft . Every file truecast writes is tracked in a per-persona ledger owned.json , under a per-persona lock, so concurrent installs never collide and truecast never clobbers a file it doesn't own. publish is the parallel path. Instead of materializing into ~/.claude , it generates the committed plugin and marketplace files that Claude Code installs from. docs/ /wastedcode/truecast/blob/main/docs — install /wastedcode/truecast/blob/main/docs/install.md , managing personas /wastedcode/truecast/blob/main/docs/managing-personas.md , authoring personas /wastedcode/truecast/blob/main/docs/authoring-personas.md , and a shipped-vs-planned status table. Kept in step with the code: a feature isn't done until it's documented. pnpm install pnpm typecheck && pnpm test && pnpm lint && pnpm build Requires Node ≥ 20 and pnpm. License: MIT intended . Design notes live in internal/ git-ignored .