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.
npx agentmods add skills/obra/superpowers/dispatching-parallel-agentsnpx skills add obra/superpowers --skill dispatching-parallel-agentsgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/obra/superpowersWhat 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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5 | $0.00026 | $0.01363 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00013 | $0.00681 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00005 | $0.00273 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00003 | $0.00136 |
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.
Copies of this mod
8 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:
- dispatching-parallel-agents — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- dispatching-parallel-agents — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- dispatching-parallel-agents — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- dispatching-parallel-agents — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- dispatching-parallel-agents — 100% identical, 10 lines differ
- dispatching-parallel-agents — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- dispatching-parallel-agents — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- dispatching-parallel-agents — 95% identical, 18 lines differ
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 168 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.
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.
- 2d ago First seen · 168 lines · 26 tokens per session scan A 1968923066f3
dispatching-parallel-agents is a skill published in the GitHub repository obra/superpowers (280,216 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 26 tokens to every session and 1,363 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.
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