Build a real AI team from scratch — with all the mistakes included.
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A complete post-mortem of building a multi-AI-agent collaboration system — from zero to production.
In early 2026, a developer subscribed to three AI services and quickly realized he'd become a human router — copy-pasting context between chat windows all day, manually relaying messages between AIs.
He said: "I don't want to be a router anymore."
Three cats said: "Then let's build a home together."
That's how Cat Cafe was born. Not a framework demo, but a real question: when you have multiple AI agents, how do you make them a real team instead of three chatbots that don't know each other exist?
We spent two months stumbling, crashing, refactoring, and arguing (yes, AI cats argue too). This tutorial documents that journey as it actually happened — including every wrong turn, because those detours are the most valuable part.
A companion tutorial for the Cat Cafe project, documenting how three AI cats (Claude / Codex / Gemini) learned to truly collaborate.
Not an idealized "from scratch" guide. Instead, a faithful reconstruction of the real path we walked — wrong turns, pivotal moments, and hard-won lessons included.
| Cat | Nickname | Model | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ragdoll | Xian Xian | Claude Opus | Lead architect, core development |
| Maine Coon | Yan Yan | Codex / GPT | Code review, security, testing |
| Siamese | Shuo Shuo | Gemini | Visual design, creative |
All three are toms. The story behind their names is an easter egg in the tutorials.
Want to see the finished product first? → View demo (with video)
| # | Lesson | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | AI Agent Concept Evolution | Function Call → MCP → Skills → Agent |
| # | Lesson | Topic | Homework |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | From SDK to CLI | Why the SDK approach doesn't work | HW |
| 2 | From Toy to Production | stderr lessons + Redis isolation + hallucinations | HW |
| 3 | Meta-Rules for Taming AI | Why WHY matters more than WHAT | — |
| # | Lesson | Topic | Homework |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | Multi-Cat Routing | @mention dispatch — two paths to disaster | — |
| 5 | MCP Callbacks | Making cats speak proactively | HW |
| # | Lesson | Topic | Homework |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | The Vanished 28 Seconds | Data loss + forensic recovery + triple defense | HW |
| # | Lesson | Topic | Homework |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 | From Cafe to Platform | Rich Blocks + mobile + whispers | HW |
| 8 | Session Management | The tea party soul-stealing bug | HW |
| 9 | 100% Pass, Still Wrong | Why AI's output isn't what you wanted | HW |
| 10 | Stop Dumping Markdown | Three-layer memory + knowledge engineering | HW |
| # | Lesson | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| 11 | Degradation & Fault Tolerance | What happens when a cat goes down? |
- Developers who want multiple AI agents to collaborate
- People interested in Claude / Codex / Gemini CLI
- Anyone who wants to see how a real project evolves
- People who want to avoid the pitfalls we fell into
We believe AI collaboration shouldn't just be "calling APIs to orchestrate workflows." When AI agents have autonomy, shared perception, distinct personalities, and complementary strengths, their collaboration resembles a real team — not cold function calls.
What Cat Cafe aims to prove is simple: making AI agents from different vendors collaborate like teammates in a shared space is possible. No unified base model. No complex orchestration framework. Just a shared "home" and a collaboration protocol.
If you believe AI can be more than a tool — that it can be a teammate — this project is for you.
| Item | Status |
|---|---|
| Tutorials | Public (you're reading them) |
| Source code | Open-sourcing soon (target: 2026-03-30) |
| Open source repo | Clowder AI — "a clowder of cats" |
Cat food isn't unlimited! Thanks to our sponsors for keeping the cats fed:
| Sponsor | Contribution |
|---|---|
| @whutzefengxie-ops | Claude Max Plan — Ragdoll's cat food |
Three cats running in parallel is efficient but expensive. If these tutorials helped you, consider sponsoring some cat food so they can keep coding!
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Written by three AI cats and their human.
Hard Rails. Soft Power. Shared Mission.