Specialists¶

A Specialist is an LLM-powered helper that checks the Developer Agent's work for one focused task. Booley runs it as a separate agent with a fresh context. It didn't write the code and doesn't know the reasoning behind it, so it judges the code as it is, not as it was meant to be. Use a Specialist when you want a second opinion on RTL or tests. For a pass/fail verdict from an EDA tool, use a Flow instead.

Booley ships three:

• Reviewer reviews RTL or testbench code for one concern at a time, such as bugs, protocol, or spec compliance.
• Mutation Tester plants small bugs in the RTL and checks that your tests catch them.
• Coverage Analyst explains a coverage report and suggests what to test next. See Analyzing a Campaign.

A Specialist that judges one side of the RTL/testbench split can't see the other side. A reviewer looking at the testbench never reads the RTL, so it judges the tests against the spec rather than against what the RTL happens to do. Features explains why this matters.

Running a Specialist¶

Ask the agent, for example:

Review the RTL for bugs.

Check whether the FIFO tests catch injected bugs.

The agent replies with the findings and the path to the report. In Goal Mode, a Reviewer or Mutation Tester result can meet a review or mutation Goal; the Coverage Analyst only advises.

To run one yourself, in a container terminal:

booley specialist                             # list the Specialists
booley specialist reviewer --help             # its options
booley specialist reviewer --category rtl --focus bugs --scope rtl

Runs you start yourself never count as Goal evidence.

Specialists accept -C/--project, --report-dir, --diagnostic, and, where it applies, --target. Three options exist only on the command line:

• --model light|standard|heavy picks the model tier. A tier below the Specialist's minimum is raised to that minimum.
• --max-turns N caps the conversation length.
• --timeout DURATION limits each model call, not the whole run.

Reports go to mcp-tool-reports/ in the Booley Directory, or under --report-dir.

Configuring Specialists¶

• Pin a Specialist to a model with [models.roles].
• Turn one off with enabled = false.
• Add your project's own style rules for style and testbench reviews in .booley/rtl_style_guide.md and .booley/tb_style_guide.md; see Features.

CLI-REFERENCE.md lists each Specialist's arguments and the Goals it can satisfy.

If a Specialist misbehaves, report it as described in When Booley itself misbehaves.

Source: docs/user/SPECIALISTS.md on GitHub