dispatching-parallel-agents

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

graph TD
    MultipleFailures{"Multiple failures?"}
    AreIndependent{"Are they independent?"}
    SingleAgent["Single agent investigates all"]
    OneAgent["One agent per problem domain"]
    CanParallel{"Can they work in parallel?"}
    Sequential["Sequential agents"]
    Parallel["Parallel dispatch"]

    MultipleFailures -->|yes| AreIndependent
    AreIndependent -->|"no - related"| SingleAgent
    AreIndependent -->|yes| CanParallel
    CanParallel -->|yes| Parallel
    CanParallel -->|"no - shared state"| Sequential

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.

2. Create Focused Agent Tasks

Each agent gets:

• Specific scope: One test file or subsystem
• Clear goal: Make these tests pass
• Constraints: Don't change other code
• Expected output: Summary of what you found and fixed