Surface Charter — Non-Overlapping Write-Territory Generator for Multi-Agent Claude Code Teams

Inspired by cbrock84/headcount, an "AI agents as a company org chart" project trending on GitHub this week (1.5k+ stars) for one idea in particular: splitting agent work by exclusive write surface instead of topic, so parallel agents never fight over the same file. Headcount ships that idea as a fixed 16-department company template. Surface Charter does the opposite — it's a generator that builds the territory map for your actual agents, whether that's two subagents or a five-person agency's worth.

What this Claude Skill does

• Interviews Claude about your real subagents/skills — names, roles, the paths each one touches — and drafts a territory map sized to your team, not a generic org chart
• Assigns every writable path to exactly one owner, with an optional non-owning reviewer role that gets blocking authority without claiming any files itself
• Ships a working, tested Python validator that catches overlapping globs between agents — including nested-directory and root-level wildcard cases a naive string-prefix check gets wrong — and exits non-zero for CI
• Includes three ready-to-adapt starting shapes (solo builder, two-person team, small agency with parallel client workstreams) plus a deliberately broken example so you can see a caught conflict before you need one
• Hands back both a human-readable SURFACE-MAP.md and a machine-checkable surface-map.yaml, with a one-line suggestion for wiring the validator into your CI

Built for

• Anyone running 2+ persistent Claude Code subagents on one repo who has already had two agents clobber the same file
• Teams scaling from one agent to several who want the ownership boundary decided up front instead of discovered in a merge conflict
• Agencies running parallel client workstreams in one monorepo who need workstreams that structurally cannot bleed into each other

What's inside

• SKILL.md — the full skill file: when to use it, the four-step method (inventory, draft, validate, hand back), and the rules for assigning territory without over-scoping
• scripts/validate_surfaces.py — a standard-library conflict checker (PyYAML optional, JSON works with zero dependencies) that generates concrete candidate paths from each glob and cross-tests them, catching overlaps that plain prefix-matching misses
• templates/solo-builder.yaml, two-person-team.yaml, agency.yaml — starting territory maps for three common team shapes
• examples/conflict-example.yaml — a deliberately broken map that reproduces two real collision patterns (nested directory overlap, root-level wildcard overlap) so you can see the validator's output before you need it
• README.md & LICENSE — install instructions, standalone CLI usage, a CI snippet, and usage terms

How a Claude Skill works

This is a Claude Skill — a single SKILL.md file Claude reads as instructions for a specific kind of work. Drop it in your Claude Project, .claude/skills/ folder, or wherever Claude can read it. Claude triggers the skill automatically when your prompt matches its description — setting up subagents, or reporting that two agents keep overwriting each other — then runs the four-step method end to end.

Author

Built by Ukiyo Productions — a strategy-led branding and growth agency. Part of a 100+ skill marketplace built for founders, operators, consultants, and agencies.