Elephant–Goldfish: plan a feature and review it with fresh AI agents

Understand the two roles

The elephant keeps the project context and drafts the proposal. Goldfish reviewers read the document and its referenced sources in fresh conversations, without the earlier discussion. You resolve the trade-offs and approve what gets built.

1. Choose one feature with real design decisions. The recorded example is an email signup form.
2. Write down when the visitor should see a success message, how duplicate submissions behave and what happens when the mailing provider is unavailable.
3. Keep requirements in the proposal rather than only in the chat, so a fresh reviewer can assess them.

Install the complete plugin

Use a project terminal with Claude Code already installed and signed in. Run these two commands, then start a new session:

1. claude plugin marketplace add google/elephant-goldfish-model
2. claude plugin install egm@egm
3. Install the complete plugin, including its reviewer instructions and document standards.
4. For Codex CLI, use these two commands instead: codex plugin marketplace add google/elephant-goldfish-model then codex plugin add egm@egm. Start a new session and select the corresponding EGM skill.
5. Brainstorming and fresh-context review require a session capable of creating subagents.

Work through the signup example

Copy this prompt into the new Claude Code session: /egm:egm-brainstorm Add an email signup form to this website. Agree where addresses go, when success can be shown, what repeated clicks do, and what visitors see if the mailing service is unavailable. Work through the requirements before changing code. Do not connect a live mailing service yet.

1. Discuss the questions and agree the form’s requirements before implementation. Retain the concepts_brief.md path returned by your session.
2. Run /egm:egm-draft and review the sections as the agent develops the design.
3. Run /egm:egm-review followed by the actual draft path, for example /egm:egm-review docs/design_draft.md only if that is where your draft was saved.
4. Check that success means the mailing service actually accepted the address, and that repeated clicks and provider failures have defined outcomes.
5. Decide which findings to address, resolve the trade-offs and approve the specification. Then request implementation and test the resulting feature.

Use the other skills when they fit

Bootstrap helps document an existing codebase. Drift Report compares design documents with the code so you can decide which one needs updating. The review process is most useful when a feature contains decisions that are easy to leave unstated.

1. Use /egm:egm-bootstrap when the project needs a written map.
2. Use /egm:egm-drift-report when a design may no longer match the implementation.
3. For a small, obvious fix, use your ordinary coding workflow.

The takeaway

Start with one feature, make its behaviour explicit and judge whether the review changed a decision you would otherwise have missed.