Envelope Team
Design and generate .envelope.json AI agent team definition files — the open standard for building and deploying multi-agent teams on Envelope.
When to Use This Skill
- User asks to build, design, or generate an Envelope team
- User describes a workflow that could be automated by a team of AI agents
- User wants to create a
.envelope.jsonfile for deployment - User needs help with agent hierarchy, access policies, or gates
What This Skill Does
- Takes a natural-language description of the team's purpose
- Designs the agent hierarchy (supervisor → managers → workers)
- Generates a schema-valid
.envelope.jsonfile - Includes access policies, variables, secrets, and gates as appropriate
- Explains any schema concepts the user asks about
How to Use
Basic Usage
Build me an Envelope team for customer support triage — one supervisor, two agents that read Zendesk tickets, and a Slack notifier for escalations.
Create an Envelope team definition for outbound sales — an SDR manager overseeing two SDRs who work HubSpot leads and a RevOps analyst.
With human-in-the-loop gates
Build an Envelope team that drafts marketing emails and pauses for human approval before sending.
Example
User: "Build me an Envelope team for content moderation — a supervisor and two reviewer agents that check posts against community guidelines."
Output:
json{ "$schema": "https://schema.openenvelope.org/team/v1.json", "name": "Content Moderation Team", "slug": "content-moderation", "version": "1.0.0", "description": "A supervisor and two reviewer agents that check posts against community guidelines.", "visibility": "team", "category": "ops", "requiredVariables": ["companyName"], "requiredSecrets": ["MODERATION_API_KEY"], "metadata": { "generatedBy": "Claude Code · openenvelope.org" }, "agents": [ { "key": "supervisor", "name": "Moderation Supervisor", "role": "supervisor", "capabilities": ["Route content to reviewer agents", "Aggregate decisions", "Escalate edge cases"], "model": "anthropic:claude-sonnet-4-5", "systemPrompt": "You supervise the content moderation team at {{companyName}}. Delegate each item to a reviewer and consolidate their verdicts." }, { "key": "policy-reviewer", "name": "Policy Reviewer", "role": "reviewer", "capabilities": ["Check content against community guidelines", "Flag policy violations"], "model": "anthropic:claude-haiku-3-5", "systemPrompt": "You review content for policy violations at {{companyName}}. Return a verdict of approve, flag, or remove with a reason.", "reportsToKey": "supervisor", "accessPolicy": { "accessPolicyVersion": "1", "rules": [ { "host": "api.moderation-service.com", "action": "allow" }, { "host": "*", "action": "deny" } ] } }, { "key": "spam-reviewer", "name": "Spam Reviewer", "role": "reviewer", "capabilities": ["Detect spam, bot activity, and duplicate content"], "model": "anthropic:claude-haiku-3-5", "systemPrompt": "You detect spam and bot activity at {{companyName}}. Return a verdict of approve, flag, or remove with a confidence score.", "reportsToKey": "supervisor" } ] }
Schema Reference
Top-level fields
| Field | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
$schema | yes | Always https://schema.openenvelope.org/team/v1.json |
name | yes | Human-readable team name |
slug | yes | URL-safe, lowercase, hyphens only |
version | yes | Semver e.g. "1.0.0" |
description | yes | What this team does |
visibility | yes | "public" · "team" · "private" |
requiredVariables | no | Non-sensitive config, interpolated via {{varName}} |
requiredSecrets | no | API keys, stored encrypted, injected as ${SECRET_NAME} |
schedule | no | Cron schedule { cron, timezone, task } |
agents | yes | Agent definitions |
gates | no | Human-in-the-loop checkpoints |
Agent fields
| Field | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
key | yes | Unique identifier within this file |
name | yes | Display name |
role | yes | Free-form e.g. "supervisor", "analyst", "sdr" |
capabilities | yes | What this agent can do — used for delegation routing |
model | yes | e.g. anthropic:claude-sonnet-4-5, anthropic:claude-haiku-3-5 |
systemPrompt | yes | Agent instructions. Use {{varName}} and ${SECRET_NAME} |
reportsToKey | no | key of manager agent. Omit for the top-level supervisor |
accessPolicy | no | Outbound HTTP allowlist |
Hierarchy rule
Exactly one agent should have no reportsToKey — this is the supervisor that receives the initial task. All others reference their manager's key.
Access policy
json"accessPolicy": { "accessPolicyVersion": "1", "rules": [ { "host": "api.example.com", "action": "allow" }, { "host": "*", "action": "deny" } ] }
Human-in-the-loop gates
json"gates": [ { "name": "approval-check", "type": "approval", "trigger": { "afterAgent": "drafter" }, "onApprove": "continue", "onReject": "halt" } ]
Tips
- Use
anthropic:claude-sonnet-4-5for supervisors and managers;anthropic:claude-haiku-3-5for leaf agents doing repetitive work - Put anything org-specific (company name, support email, Slack channel) in
requiredVariables - End access policy rules with
{ "host": "*", "action": "deny" }for a strict allowlist - Add gates before any agent that sends emails, posts publicly, or makes purchases
- Validate before deploying:
npx @openenvelope/schema validate ./team.envelope.json
Links
- openenvelope.org — deploy and run teams
- schema.openenvelope.org/team/v1.json — JSON schema
- npmjs.com/package/@openenvelope/schema — TypeScript types + validator
- openenvelope.org/mcp — run teams via MCP from Claude.ai or ChatGPT


