dispatching-parallel-agents

A method for delegating unrelated coding problems to separate agents that work at the same time. It keeps each agent focused on one problem area.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for handling separate test failures, bugs, or subsystem investigations in parallel.
Why use it?
It reduces wasted time when multiple independent failures or tasks can be investigated without sharing state or waiting on one another.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/mdcms-ai/mdcms/dispatching-parallel-agents
Any agent
npx skills add mdcms-ai/mdcms --skill dispatching-parallel-agents
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mdcms-ai/mdcms

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 26 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,453 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 91% copy Near-identical to another mod in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00026 $0.01453
Opus 5 $0.00013 $0.00727
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00291
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00145

Measured 2d ago against content hash 76806091c7f9, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

dispatching-parallel-agents scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

This is a copy

91% identical to dispatching-parallel-agents — 33 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

.ai/skills/dispatching-parallel-agents/SKILL.md · 183 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 183 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Dispatching Parallel Agents

Overview

You delegate tasks to specialized agents with isolated context. By precisely crafting their instructions and context, you ensure they stay focused and succeed at their task. They should never inherit your session's context or history — you construct exactly what they need. This also preserves your own context for coordination work.

When you have multiple unrelated failures (different test files, different subsystems, different bugs), investigating them sequentially wastes time. Each investigation is independent and can happen in parallel.

Core principle: Dispatch one agent per independent problem domain. Let them work concurrently.

When to Use

digraph when_to_use {
    "Multiple failures?" [shape=diamond];
    "Are they independent?" [shape=diamond];
    "Single agent investigates all" [shape=box];
    "One agent per problem domain" [shape=box];
    "Can they work in parallel?" [shape=diamond];
    "Sequential agents" [shape=box];
    "Parallel dispatch" [shape=box];

    "Multiple failures?" -> "Are they independent?" [label="yes"];
    "Are they independent?" -> "Single agent investigates all" [label="no - related"];
    "Are they independent?" -> "Can they work in parallel?" [label="yes"];
    "Can they work in parallel?" -> "Parallel dispatch" [label="yes"];
    "Can they work in parallel?" -> "Sequential agents" [label="no - shared state"];
}

Use when:

  • 3+ test files failing with different root causes
  • Multiple subsystems broken independently
  • Each problem can be understood without context from others
  • No shared state between investigations

Don't use when:

  • Failures are related (fix one might fix others)
  • Need to understand full system state
  • Agents would interfere with each other

The Pattern

1. Identify Independent Domains

Group failures by what's broken:

  • File A tests: Tool approval flow
  • File B tests: Batch completion behavior
  • File C tests: Abort functionality

Each domain is independent - fixing tool approval doesn't affect abort tests.

Read the full file on GitHub · 183 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 183 lines · 26 tokens per session scan A 76806091c7f9

Subscribe to this mod's changes

dispatching-parallel-agents is a skill published in the GitHub repository mdcms-ai/mdcms (22 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 26 tokens to every session and 1,453 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 91% identical to dispatching-parallel-agents, differing in 33 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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