Multi-Agent Orchestration

The coordinator owns integration and the final claim of completion.

The user's instructions take precedence over this skill; delegation, tools, and external actions remain subject to current host instructions and authorization, and this skill grants a worker no authority the coordinator lacks.

Check Capabilities Before Dispatch

Inspect the actual tools and current schemas instead of inferring capabilities from a product name. An external CLI reviewer is still delegation, not an escape hatch.

Choose the Shape by Dependency

Fan out by default: anything that splits across independent surfaces runs in parallel, and the coordinator keeps working while workers run. The limits are resources, not agent count: one owner per shared mutable surface, one committer per index, and a sequential chain stays sequential. Check the critical path, since a branch waiting on one shared interface gains nothing from more agents. Do not cap a fleet to look frugal or serialize work to look careful; name the contended resource or don't restrict. A worker that double-checks a small change rarely pays; the verification triggers below say when it does.

Establish Ownership and Integration

Map shared resources as well as files: generated artifacts, schemas, lockfiles, fixtures, ports, build outputs, and caches collide across otherwise disjoint modules.

Worktrees isolate tracked files and the index, not ports or databases. Never overwrite a human's or sibling's edits to clear a conflict. In a shared tree, workers report patches while one coordinator stages and commits. Investigate a lock's actual owner before removing it; an inconclusive process listing does not establish that a lock is safe to remove.

Before dispatch, define how partial progress becomes integrated progress: the artifact each consumer expects and when it is ready.

Write Briefs

Give each worker the original request plus facts absent from their checkout, such as user corrections and untracked decisions.

Let workers challenge a premise. A first independent review gets the raw change without coaching; a follow-up verification gets the finding and the fix claim so it can test closure. Templates are in references/dispatch-briefs.md.

Supervise

Harvest dependency-ready results as they arrive. Silence alone does not prove an agent is stuck; check its artifacts before interrupting. Polling must respect the host's limits. When requirements change, tell the affected workers.

A watcher needs a completion condition, failure detection, an expiry, and a stale-state check, with its signal tested on a known state. Cancel only processes this run owns. A watch loop checks for new user messages between polls and yields to them.

Harvest, Integrate, Verify

A worker's summary is a claim; inspect the actual diffs. Integrate at a stable checkpoint and run checks covering the combined behavior.

Independent verification is required when consequence or run length justifies it (shared or production state, an unattended run past a checkpoint, an acceptance check the implementer cannot alter) or when the project contract requires it. The implementer cannot certify an independent PASS. Tie each verdict to a revision or recorded snapshot.

An interrupted review cannot grant a full PASS. Agreement does not establish severity; impact does. Do not reuse a PASS for changed runtime code.

Finish With an Honest State

Report integrated outcomes, the checks run and their revision, unresolved limits, and any blocked gate with the action it needs. Capture durable coordination failures in project memory: the contended resource, mechanism, fix, and conditions.

Evidence

Reviewed 2026-09-04 and 2026-10-27; sources and their limits are in references/evidence.md.

Anti-Patterns

References

Read references/dispatch-briefs.md when composing worker, research, verification, or watcher instructions.

What This Skill is NOT

• Permission to ignore host delegation rules or user ownership.
• A fixed pipeline, agent quota, or requirement to use multiple agents.
• A substitute for integrated verification or the coordinator's judgment.