Ynh Team Setup

Team Harness Setup

You are guiding a user through creating a team harness that delegates to personal harnesses. This is the "graduation" from individual use to team-wide adoption.

Before you start

Read these references to understand delegation and Git URL formats:

1. Read references/delegation.md for delegates_to syntax, Git URL formats, auth, vendor support, and the team harness shape

It ships with this skill, so it is readable wherever the skill is installed. Author the new harness as .ynh-plugin/plugin.json, the format below. The ynh repository is not present in a user's project — do not send them looking for fixtures in it.

Step 1: Understand their current setup

Ask the user:

• Do they already have a harness? What's it called?
• Is it in a Git repo already, or just local?
• What does their team look like? (size, shared standards, tooling)

Step 2: Explain the delegation model

Explain how ynh delegation works (see references/delegation.md):

Delegation means a team harness knows about personal harnesses. When someone runs the team harness and asks for something that a personal harness handles, the AI vendor can delegate to it as a subagent.

Two modes of use:

• Delegation for quick tasks: Run team-dev "deploy checklist" and it delegates to the right specialist
• Dedicated sessions for deep work: Run david directly when you need your full personal context

The team harness bundles shared standards (rules, skills) while individual harnesses carry personal preferences.

Step 3: Team harness location

Ask where to create the team harness. Options:

• A new Git repo (recommended for teams - everyone installs from the URL)
• A local directory (fine for testing first)

Suggest a name like team-dev or <company>-dev.

Step 4: Team artifacts

Ask what shared artifacts the team needs:

• Rules - Coding standards, review checklist, testing requirements
• Skills - Shared workflows (deploy, review, incident response)
• Agents - Team specialists (security reviewer, architecture advisor)
• Commands - Common operations (CI checks, deploy)

They might also want to pull from external repos via includes.

Step 5: Generate the team harness

Create the team harness directory.

.ynh-plugin/plugin.json:

{
  "$schema": "https://eyelock.github.io/ynh/schema/plugin.schema.json",
  "name": "<team-name>",
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "description": "<team description>",
  "default_vendor": "<vendor>",
  "delegates_to": [
    {"git": "<personal-persona-git-url>"}
  ]
}

You can also add delegates from the CLI instead of editing the manifest, which is easier once the harness exists:

ynh delegate add <harness> github.com/user/harness --ref v1.2.0

--ref pins to a tag, branch or commit and --path selects a subdirectory in a monorepo. Pin third-party delegates. A delegate is a harness whose instructions run inside your agent, so tracking a branch means whoever can push to that repo changes how your assistant behaves on the next run.

Git URL format for delegates_to - see references/delegation.md for the three formats:

• Shorthand: github.com/user/harness (expands to SSH)
• Full SSH: git@github.com:user/harness.git
• Full HTTPS: https://github.com/user/harness.git

If the personal harness isn't in Git yet, explain they'll need to push it first for delegation to work. Show them how:

cd <harness-dir>
git init && git add . && git commit -m "Initial harness"
# Push to their Git hosting

Generate any shared artifacts they requested (rules, skills, etc.) following standard formats (skills need SKILL.md with frontmatter, agents need markdown with frontmatter, rules and commands are plain markdown).

Step 6: Installation for the team

Show the team installation flow:

# Team member installs the team harness
ynh install <team-harness-git-url>
team-dev                    # interactive session with team config

# They can also install their own personal harness
ynh install <personal-persona-git-url>
david                       # personal session

Explain the vendor standardization: setting default_vendor in .ynh-plugin/plugin.json ensures everyone uses the same AI vendor, but individuals can override with -v.

Step 7: Auth considerations

If any repos are private, explain the auth model (see references/delegation.md). Key points:

• SSH URLs (git@github.com:...) recommended for private repos
• ynh delegates to the local git binary - if git clone works, ynh works
• Team members each need their own SSH keys / credentials configured

Step 8: Next steps

After the team harness is working:

1. Version with Git tags - Use ref: v1.0.0 in includes for stable references
2. Monorepo support - If the org has a monorepo with AI config, use the path field in delegates_to (see references/delegation.md).
3. Multiple teams - Each team can have their own harness that delegates to specialists. Harnesses compose infinitely.