Conclave

A bureau of Claude agents that deliberates, decides, and delivers.

Conclave is an open-source multi-agent framework built natively on Anthropic Managed Agents. Define your organization in YAML. Give it a goal. Watch your agents deliberate.

🎬 Watch the demo · 🌐 Project site · ⭐ Star to follow development · 📖 ANTHROPIC.md

Quickstart

pip install conclave-agents
conclave init --template product-squad
conclave run "Your goal here" --dry-run   # no API key needed
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
conclave run "Your goal here"

Demo

Product Squad deliberating on a checkout API spec. 3 agents, 3 turns, ~34% cheaper than all-Sonnet on this run — and up to ~70% on workloads with more repetitive handoffs.

The static SVG above is regenerated with python examples/render_demo.py. For an animated GIF, record with vhs — see examples/DEMO_RECORDING.md.

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◆ Conclave · product_squad · 3 agents

  [CPO]       Received brief. Clarifying scope before delegating.
  [CPO → TechLead]  "I need a spec covering auth, idempotency, and rollback. Budget: 2 sprints."
  [TechLead]  Drafting spec. Flagging dependency on payment-service v3.
  [TechLead → QA]   "Spec attached. Prioritize payment flow edge cases."
  [QA]        Test plan generated. 3 blockers found, escalating.
  [QA → CPO]  "Blocker: payment-service v3 not yet in staging."

◆ Decision Trail saved → .conclave/trail_20260418.jsonl
◆ Artifacts → spec.md · test_plan.md · blockers.md

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Why this project exists

Multi-agent frameworks today model tasks or graphs. Real organizations don't work that way. They work through roles that hold persistent accountability, deliberate together, and leave an audit trail. Conclave is the attempt to make that the primitive — not the workaround.

Three concrete problems it solves:

1. Token cost blows up with persistent agents. A role whose history grows with every turn becomes a Sonnet-sized bill even for trivial work. Conclave routes each task through a classifier: repetitive work goes to a Haiku self-correction loop, novel work goes to Sonnet. Typical savings: 60–80%.
2. Coordination has no audit layer. Who decided what, when, and why? Conclave writes every inter-agent message to a JSONL Decision Trail — replayable, diffable, postmortem-ready.
3. Org structure lives in code, not config. Defining a company in Python is a liability. Conclave uses a YAML org chart any non-engineer can read, amend, and ship.

Why the name

Conclave — from Latin cum clave, "locked with a key." Historically the gathering where cardinals deliberate behind closed doors until a decision emerges. The metaphor fits: a small group of specialists, each with a persistent role, working through a structured deliberation until a concrete output is produced.

It also signals the opposite of the dominant agent-framework aesthetic: not a graph, not a pipeline, not a swarm — a bureau.

Why it makes sense next to market solutions

	LangGraph	CrewAI	AutoGen	Conclave
Agent primitive	Node in a graph	Task worker	Chat participant	Organizational role
Coordination	Explicit DAG	Linear pipeline	Free-form chat	Deliberation mode (hierarchy / consensus / first-valid)
Memory	Checkpointer	Per-task	Per-conversation	Persistent per-role, structured inbox/outbox
Cost control	Manual	Manual	Manual	Router: Haiku loop vs Sonnet, per-task decision
Audit	Optional traces	Logs	Chat history	Decision Trail, always on, JSONL-replayable
Config surface	Python graph	Python + YAML	Python	YAML-first, readable by non-engineers
Production story	Build your own	Build your own	Build your own	Certification pipeline + dashboard + benchmark

What none of them ship: org-level primitives (reporting lines, accountability, escalation paths), cost routing built into the framework, or a retroactive certification loop that promotes routine tasks to cheaper models once they're proven.

Why it makes sense next to Anthropic's offering

Anthropic ships the agent primitive (Managed Agents, Claude Code, MCP). It explicitly does not ship the organizational layer — reporting chains, deliberation strategies, multi-role coordination. Third-party frameworks have rushed in, but most ignore Anthropic's native primitives and rebuild a parallel stack.

Conclave's bet is the opposite: be the org layer directly on top of Anthropic's primitives, so the two grow together rather than diverge.

Anthropic primitive	How Conclave uses it
Managed Agents (beta)	Each ConclaveAgent maps 1:1 to a Managed Agent session. The backend is abstracted so the swap is one file when GA ships.
MCP	Each entry in an agent's tools: list binds to an MCP server. No custom tool protocol.
Model tiering (Haiku / Sonnet / Opus)	The whole framework is designed around it: classifier on Haiku, deliberation on Sonnet, escalation on Opus. The certification pipeline produces evidence of when Haiku is production-viable.
Claude Code	/conclave slash command brings the full pipeline into Claude Code sessions.

For Anthropic specifically, Conclave is useful as a reference implementation: it demonstrates what developers will build on top of Managed Agents once multi-session coordination is native — and it validates the tiered-model strategy with concrete cost/quality numbers (see benchmarks/results.json and ANTHROPIC.md).

---

Define your org in YAML

# examples/product_squad.yml
org:
  name: "Product Squad"
  deliberation: consensus          # consensus | hierarchy | first-valid

  agents:
    - role: CPO
      persona: |
        Strategic and data-driven. Defines scope, validates business value.
        Asks clarifying questions before delegating. Never skips the "why".
      tools: [notion, slack]
      memory: persistent

    - role: TechLead
      persona: |
        Pragmatic. Writes tight specs, challenges assumptions, flags blockers early.
        Prefers two options over one recommendation.
      reports_to: CPO
      tools: [github, linear]
      memory: persistent

    - role: QA_Engineer
      persona: |
        Defensive thinker. Finds edge cases. Escalates blockers immediately.
      reports_to: TechLead
      tools: [github, browserbase]

---

How it works

Conclave maps directly onto the Anthropic Managed Agents primitives:

conclave.yml
    │
    ├──► Managed Agent Session "CPO"        ← long-running, persistent state
    ├──► Managed Agent Session "TechLead"   ← long-running, persistent state
    ├──► Managed Agent Session "QA"         ← long-running, persistent state
    │
    └──► Conclave Bus (the coordination layer Managed Agents doesn't ship yet)
              │
              ├── Routes messages between agents
              ├── Applies deliberation strategy (consensus / hierarchy)
              └── Writes every handoff to the Decision Trail

Each agent is a Claude Managed Agent session with:

• Its own persona and toolset (via MCP servers)
• Persistent memory scoped to its role
• A structured inbox/outbox for inter-agent messages

---

Decision Trail

Every action is logged with full provenance:

{"ts":"2026-04-18T09:01:12Z","from":"CPO","to":"TechLead","type":"delegation","content":"Need a spec covering auth, idempotency, and rollback. Budget: 2 sprints.","reasoning":"Business value validated. TechLead owns technical scope."}
{"ts":"2026-04-18T09:03:44Z","from":"TechLead","to":"QA","type":"handoff","content":"Spec attached. Prioritize payment flow edge cases.","reasoning":"Spec complete. QA gate before CPO review."}
{"ts":"2026-04-18T09:07:21Z","from":"QA","to":"CPO","type":"escalation","content":"Blocker: payment-service v3 not yet in staging.","reasoning":"Cannot validate end-to-end without staging parity. Requires CPO decision."}

Human-readable audit. Replayable. Debuggable.

---

Deliberation modes

# Hierarchy: each agent defers to its manager
conclave run "Redesign onboarding" --deliberation hierarchy

# Consensus: agents iterate until all roles agree
conclave run "Define Q3 priorities" --deliberation consensus

# First-valid: first agent to produce a complete output wins
conclave run "Fix this bug" --deliberation first-valid

---

MCP Integrations

Conclave agents use the same MCP servers as Claude Code and CoWork:

Integration	Roles that use it
Notion	CPO, PM
Linear / Jira	TechLead, PM
GitHub	TechLead, QA, SWE
Slack	All roles
Browserbase	QA, Growth
Sentry	TechLead, QA

---

Org templates

conclave init --template startup-5         # CEO, CPO, TechLead, Designer, QA
conclave init --template product-squad     # CPO, PM, TechLead, QA
conclave init --template growth-squad      # CMO, Growth, Designer, Analyst
conclave init --template creative-agency   # CD, Copywriter, Art Director, PM

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Roadmap

• Core agent bus + deliberation engine
• Decision Trail
• YAML org definition
• MCP integrations (Notion, Linear, GitHub, Slack)
• conclave simulate — dry-run mode, no tools fired
• Org memory dashboard (local web UI)
• Role marketplace (community-contributed personas)
• Native Managed Agents multi-session API (in sync with Anthropic GA)
• conclave replay — re-run a past trail with a different deliberation strategy

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Philosophy

Most multi-agent frameworks define agents by task.
Conclave defines agents by role — with the organizational context, persistent memory, and deliberation patterns that make enterprise coordination actually work.

An org isn't a DAG. It's a living system of accountabilities.
Conclave models that.

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Contributing

Conclave is early. The best contributions right now:

• Org templates — battle-tested YAML configs for your team structure
• Persona library — role definitions that actually behave like the role
• MCP connectors — new integrations via the MCP server spec
• Deliberation strategies — new coordination patterns beyond the three built-ins

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

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Built on

• Anthropic Managed Agents
• Model Context Protocol
• Claude Sonnet 4

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Conclave. From latin cum clave — locked in deliberation until the decision is made.