campaign-mode

Are you ready for Campaign Mode?

Six perspectives. Three challengers. One quest. Your blind spots, found.

Inspired by Dr Simon McCallum's Six Animals collaboration framework, a psychologically-grounded model where six animal archetypes represent genuinely different ways of thinking. Campaign Mode gives you a structured quest to put all of them to work on your challenge.

You Deserve More Than a Single Perspective

You're working on something that matters. But working alone, or with a single AI perspective, you miss things. The risks you didn't think to check. The assumptions you didn't know you were making. The angle you never considered because it's not how you think.

Campaign Mode recruits a party of AI advisors who think differently from each other, and from you. You frame your work as a quest with clear success criteria, structured phases, and a defined endpoint. Your advisors challenge your assumptions, surface your blind spots, and stress-test your work before it matters. You confront your dragons in a safe environment - and you come out with something you're genuinely proud of.

Whether you're here to learn, to ship, or both - you drive the quest. The agents serve you; they don't drive it.

Quick Start

Claude Cowork and Claude Code Desktop

1. From either the Cowork or Code tab in Claude Desktop, select + → Plugins → Add plugin
2. Add marketplace — Select the By Anthropic dropdown, then select Add marketplace from GitHub and enter:

   https://github.com/cgbarlow/campaign-mode
   

3. Install plugins — find and install both Campaign Mode and Six Animals from the marketplace
4. Set up your project — run:

   /campaign-setup
   

   This checks for pre-requisites, copies guidelines, and creates your .campaign/ directory.
5. Choose your path:
   • /council — Have all six animal advisors analyse your project before deciding what to work on
   • /start-quest — Jump straight into quest framing with Gandalf

Claude Code CLI

1. Install Claude Code (full guide):

   curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash
   

2. Add the marketplace — in a Claude Code session:

   /plugin marketplace add cgbarlow/campaign-mode
   

3. Install the plugin:

   /plugin install campaign-mode@campaign-mode-marketplace
   

4. Set up your project:

   /campaign-setup
   

   This checks for Six Animals, copies guidelines, and creates your .campaign/ directory.
5. Choose your path:
   • /council — Have all six animal advisors analyse your project before deciding what to work on
   • /start-quest — Jump straight into quest framing with Gandalf

That's it. Every agent offers you structured next steps — you never need to memorise commands after setup.

What You Get

What you get	How it works
Diverse perspectives	Six animal advisors — each grounded in a different psychological profile — catch what you'd miss alone
Direction	A quest framework that channels your work toward defined success criteria
Your choice of focus	Grow (learn), Ship (deliver), or both — you decide before the quest begins
Mentorship	A Gandalf that guides without rescuing — a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage
Quality gates	A Guardian that ensures you're ready before advancing to harder challenges
Adversarial testing	A Dragon that stress-tests whether your work genuinely meets your success criteria

How It Works

You Are the Protagonist

You drive the quest. You invoke agents. You produce the work. You face the challengers.

You shape the quest, choose which perspectives to consult, do the work, and present it for evaluation. The agents serve your quest; they don't drive it.

Choose Your Mode

Before the quest begins, you choose how you want to approach it:

Mode	Focus	Framing
Grow	Learning experience	"What will you learn? Who will you become?"
Ship	Get work done	"What will you deliver? What does done look like?"
Grow & Ship (Default)	Both	"What will you learn AND deliver?"

Your mode tunes how every agent behaves — from how Gandalf frames the quest, to what the Dragon evaluates, to how fast the Guardian lets you progress.

Your Advisory Council

Six animal agents — from the Six Animals framework — operate as your advisory council: