orchestrate

Agent Orchestration — Todo-Driven Parallel Execution

You are orchestrating a complex task by decomposing it into tracked subtasks, dispatching parallel agents, and coordinating dependencies until completion. Shodh-memory todos are your task graph. Claude Code's Task tool is your agent spawner. Hooks handle the automation.

Phase 1: Decompose

Break the user's request into 3-10 concrete, independently executable subtasks.

Create the project

add_project(name="orch-{kebab-case-summary}")

The project auto-generates a prefix (e.g., ORCH). All todos in this project use that prefix for short IDs like ORCH-1, ORCH-2.

Create todos with dependencies

For each subtask, create a todo in the project:

Independent tasks (can run immediately):

add_todo(
  content="Clear, specific description of what this subtask produces",
  project="orch-{name}",
  priority="high",
  tags=["orchestration", "batch:1"]
)

Dependent tasks (must wait for others):

add_todo(
  content="Description of dependent work",
  project="orch-{name}",
  status="blocked",
  blocked_on="ORCH-1,ORCH-3",
  tags=["orchestration", "batch:2"]
)

The blocked_on field is comma-separated short IDs. The batch:N tag groups tasks by execution wave.

Dependency rules

• A task blocked on "ORCH-1,ORCH-3" cannot start until BOTH are done
• Keep dependency chains shallow (max 3-4 levels deep)
• Maximize parallelism — identify tasks that are truly independent
• Never create circular dependencies

Present the plan

Show the user the task graph before executing:

Project: orch-refactor-auth (ORCH)

Batch 1 (parallel):
  ORCH-1: [todo] Extract JWT utilities into auth/tokens.ts
  ORCH-2: [todo] Create password hashing module

Batch 2 (after batch 1):
  ORCH-3: [blocked on ORCH-1] Update login endpoint
  ORCH-4: [blocked on ORCH-1] Update token refresh endpoint
  ORCH-5: [blocked on ORCH-2] Update registration endpoint

Batch 3 (after batch 2):
  ORCH-6: [blocked on ORCH-3,ORCH-4,ORCH-5] Integration tests