using-herdr-sibling-panes

Using herdr sibling panes

HERDR_ENV=1 is required. If it is missing, stop.

Placeholder resolution: <KEY> placeholders in this file (such as <REPORT_DIRECTORY>) resolve from the Herdrpowers Configuration section of the repository's CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md. If that section is missing, initialize it with the pack's init workflow (/herdrpowers:init on Claude Code plugin installs; commands/init.md otherwise), or fall back to the git-ignored workspace that pane-driven-development/scripts/pdd-workspace [PLAN_FILE] prints (per-plan with a plan file, the shared adhoc directory without one).

For pane layout, read herdr. Use this skill only for multi-pane delegation to idle sibling agent panes.

When to use

Use when you are inside herdr, your pane is acting as the orchestrator for the task (whichever pane received the task — no specific tool is assumed or required), and one or more sibling agent panes are idle.

What to delegate depends on how this skill was entered:

• Driven by the orchestration skill: this skill is the delegation transport; the orchestration skill's task routing decides what goes to which agent, including complex coding.
• Standalone: delegate only independent operational work such as tests, lint, formatting, file reads, git status/diff/log, server logs, and command output. Do not delegate coding, design, root-cause debugging, planning, or reasoning-heavy work.

Workflow

1. Run herdr pane list and identify your own pane (the orchestrator) by $HERDR_PANE_ID. Every entry carries pane_id, tab_id, workspace_id, agent, agent_status, and cwd.
2. Discard every out-of-scope pane first — by default that is every pane outside your own tab. See "Delegation scope" below; it applies before anything else in this list.
3. From what remains, select only sibling panes that have an agent field and agent_status: idle or done. A pane with no agent field is a plain shell or a crashed agent — see "Failure handling". The agent field alone is not proof the agent is alive: it can name a CLI that has since exited, leaving the pane at a shell prompt. The helper checks this before sending anything (it exits 2 when the pane's foreground process is its own shell), so let it — never hand-send text to a pane you have not confirmed.
4. When more than one candidate remains, confirm the composer is empty before you send: herdr pane read "$PANE" --source visible. An empty composer reads as an empty follow-up placeholder (› , → Add a follow-up). A pane showing unsent text is not a candidate — another orchestrator is composing there, and composer-submit.sh wipes that draft with ctrl+u before it resets the session. The helper cannot tell a half-written brief from any other composer content and must not try: this is someone else's work being destroyed, not a failure to recover from. If the only candidate has leftover text, do not send — report the pane to the user.
5. Distribute independent work items across the available panes, one instruction per pane.
6. Submit one self-contained instruction per pane with scripts/composer-submit.sh. It resets the target session and submits the instruction in one call; do not send /clear yourself.
7. Do not send a second prompt such as "Please run the task I just sent." The submitted instruction is already running.
8. Wait for the instruction's unique completion marker with herdr wait output, always with a timeout.
9. On a marker match, re-read pane list. If the pane is still working, wait for idle; if it is already idle or done, continue. Agent status lags behind the visible output — the marker is the completion signal, status is not.
10. On anything other than a marker match, go to "Failure handling". Never retype into a composer to "fix" a failed submission.
11. Read the completed result and integrate it in the orchestrator pane.