Mental Model

Overview

Each crew is easiest to hold as five shared layers. AI work sits in Collaborate; Motive and Kick are the person and CLI; Config and Deliver are YAML and artifacts. Anthropic names from Building effective agents (PDF).

Applied workflows

• Parallelization + Evaluator-Optimizer. Debate runs propose and oppose sides, then a judge scores on the arguments alone.
• Orchestrator-Worker. Stock Picker uses a hierarchical manager that delegates find → research → pick.
• Prompt Chaining. Financial Researcher gathers then writes; Engineering Team designs → codes → Gradio + tests; Coder plans → writes → runs → checks.
• Not used here (yet). Routing as a first-class path (no category slug or confidence gate across crews).

Layers

• 1 Motive. Developer supplies the run input: motion, sector, company, requirements, or assignment.
• 2 Config. agents.yaml / tasks.yaml define roles; crew.py sets process (sequential or hierarchical), tools, and models.
• 3 Kick. crewai run in the crew folder starts one closed collaboration.
• 4 Collaborate. Crew agents execute the process — Parallelization / Orchestrator-Worker / Prompt Chaining as above.
• 5 Deliver. Markdown, JSON, code, Gradio app.py, or push notification land under output/ (and related paths).

Layer map

Shared stack for any crew run. Diagram key: ✦ AI agent · second line = Anthropic workflow · purple = actor · white = service.

---
config:
  theme: default
  themeVariables:
    background: "#ffffff"
    fontSize: "14px"
---
flowchart TB
    person[Developer]
    motive["1 Motive
motion sector company reqs"]
    config["2 Config
YAML plus crew.py"]
    kick["3 Kick
crewai run"]
    debate["✦ 4a Debate
Parallelization"]
    stockPicker["✦ 4b Stock Picker
Orchestrator-Worker"]
    finResearcher["✦ 4c Financial Researcher
Prompt Chaining"]
    engTeam["✦ 4d Engineering Team
Prompt Chaining"]
    coder["✦ 4e Coder
Prompt Chaining"]
    deliver["5 Deliver
output artifacts"]

    person -->|pick a crew and inputs| motive --> config --> kick
    kick --> debate --> deliver
    kick --> stockPicker --> deliver
    kick --> finResearcher --> deliver
    kick --> engTeam --> deliver
    kick --> coder --> deliver
    deliver --> person

    classDef agent fill:#e8f0ee,stroke:#0f3d36,stroke-width:2px,color:#0d0d0d
    classDef service fill:#fafaf8,stroke:#c8c8c2,stroke-width:1px,color:#0d0d0d
    classDef actor fill:#f3eef8,stroke:#6b4f9a,stroke-width:2px,color:#0d0d0d
    class debate,stockPicker,finResearcher,engTeam,coder agent
    class motive,config,kick,deliver service
    class person actor

Read layers left to right into Collaborate; drill into crew tabs for roles and tools.