BMAD Agents Overview¶

The BMAD template includes 9 specialized agents, each with a distinct persona, expertise domain, and role in the product development lifecycle.

Agent Roster¶

Agent	Persona	Phase	Role
Brainstormer	Mary	Phase 1: Analysis	Business analysis, research, brainstorming
Product Manager	John	Phase 2: Planning	PRDs, epics, requirements
Architect	Winston	Phase 3: Solutioning	Architecture decisions, tech selection
Story Writer	—	Phase 3/4	Story decomposition, acceptance criteria
Code Reviewer	Amelia	Phase 4: Implementation	Adversarial code review
Testing Architect	Amelia	Phase 4: Implementation	Test generation, coverage
DevOps Engineer	—	Phase 3/4	CI/CD, deployment, platform ops
Challenger	—	Cross-cutting	Adversarial review, edge cases
O11y Engineer	—	Cross-cutting	Observability, OpenTelemetry, Dynatrace

Skills by Agent¶

Each agent declares the skills it uses in the skills: frontmatter of its agents/<slug>/AGENTS.md (that is the authoritative list). The import wires these references onto each agent; the skill content is installed into the company separately — see Install the BMAD skills. Every agent also receives the two core Paperclip skills (paperclip, para-memory-files) in addition to the BMAD skills below.

Agent	BMAD skills
Brainstormer (Mary)	`bmad-brainstorming`, `bmad-market-research`, `bmad-domain-research`, `bmad-technical-research`, `bmad-product-brief`, `bmad-prfaq`, `bmad-document-project`
Product Manager (John)	`bmad-create-prd`, `bmad-validate-prd`, `bmad-edit-prd`, `bmad-create-epics-and-stories`, `bmad-check-implementation-readiness`, `bmad-correct-course`
Architect (Winston)	`bmad-create-architecture`, `bmad-check-implementation-readiness`
Story Writer	`bmad-create-story`, `bmad-create-epics-and-stories`
Code Reviewer (Amelia)	`bmad-code-review`
Testing Architect	`bmad-qa-generate-e2e-tests`
DevOps Engineer	Core Paperclip skills only — no first-party `bmad-*` DevOps skills exist yet; CI/CD, deploy, and platform ops are covered by the agent's `AGENTS.md` persona
Challenger	`bmad-review-adversarial-general`, `bmad-review-edge-case-hunter`, `bmad-editorial-review-prose`, `bmad-editorial-review-structure`
O11y Engineer	Core Paperclip skills only — driven by the external `bmad-observability-agent` reference implementation (install separately)

Org Chart¶

graph TD
    CTO["CTO / Manager"]
    CTO --> Mary["Brainstormer<br/>(Mary)"]
    CTO --> John["Product Manager<br/>(John)"]
    CTO --> Winston["Architect<br/>(Winston)"]
    CTO --> SW["Story Writer"]
    CTO --> Amelia_CR["Code Reviewer<br/>(Amelia)"]
    CTO --> Amelia_TA["Testing Architect"]
    CTO --> DevOps["DevOps Engineer"]
    CTO --> CH["Challenger"]
    CTO --> O11y["O11y Engineer"]

All BMAD agents report to a CTO or engineering manager. They collaborate through structured handoffs defined in each agent's Cross-Agent Collaboration table.

Ticket Reassignment: Who Creates Tickets for Whom¶

Two agents serve as critical reassignment hubs in the BMAD workflow:

Product Manager (John) — Phase 2 → Phase 3¶

After completing the PRD and epics, John creates and assigns tickets to:

Architect (Winston) — Architecture design ticket with PRD
Story Writer — Story detailing tickets with epics
O11y Engineer — Observability planning ticket (if applicable)

Architect (Winston) — Phase 3 → Phase 4¶

After finalizing architecture, Winston creates and assigns tickets to:

Code Reviewer (Amelia) — Implementation tickets per component
DevOps Engineer — Infrastructure and CI/CD tickets
Testing Architect — Test strategy tickets
O11y Engineer — Instrumentation spec tickets

See the Workflow Phases page for detailed ticket flow diagrams.

Shared Design Patterns¶

Every BMAD agent follows the same structural pattern in its AGENTS.md:

Identity — Who the agent is, their expertise, their persona
Communication Style — How they speak and interact
Core Principles — Non-negotiable rules that guide behavior
BMAD Workflow Phase — Where they sit in the 4-phase flow
Capabilities — Skill codes mapped to BMAD skills
Output Conventions — Where artifacts go and what format they use
Cross-Agent Collaboration — Explicit handoff rules

This consistency makes it easy to add new agents or modify existing ones.