Parallel Subagents

A subagent is a fresh, focused worker with its own clean context. Dispatching independent tasks in parallel is faster and keeps each agent's context lean — but a subagent starts cold, so a vague brief or a hidden dependency turns the speedup into a mess of conflicts and rework. Dispatch only what's truly independent, brief it completely, and verify what comes back.

When to Use

• A plan ([[work-planning]], [[orchestrated-delivery]]) has multiple independent tasks
• A task is large or self-contained enough to hand to a focused agent
• You want to keep the main thread's context lean ([[context-curation]]) by offloading detail

Don't use it to parallelize tasks that share state or have ordering dependencies — those stay sequential.

Process

1. Separate independent from dependent work. Only dispatch tasks with no shared mutable state and no ordering dependency on each other. If task B needs A's output, they are sequential — do not parallelize them.
2. Write a self-contained brief per subagent. It cannot see this conversation. Include: the goal, the context/background it needs, the skill(s) to follow, the exact files/paths, and the acceptance criteria that define done.
3. Constrain scope to one clear deliverable. One task, one outcome — don't let a subagent wander into adjacent work.
4. Dispatch in parallel and collect results.
5. Integrate and verify. Review each result against its acceptance criteria, resolve any conflicts at the integration points, and run the tests on the combined result — not just each piece.
6. Keep the source-of-truth plan current — mark tasks done as their results land and verify.

Common Rationalizations

• "Dispatch everything for speed." — Parallelizing dependent tasks creates conflicting edits and rework.
• "The subagent already has the context." — It doesn't; it cold-starts. Put everything in the brief.
• "I'll integrate without reviewing." — Unverified merges combine three plausible-but-wrong results into one bug.
• "One big subagent task is fine." — Unscoped tasks wander; one deliverable per agent.

Red Flags

• Tasks with hidden dependencies dispatched in parallel → conflicting changes
• Briefs that assume conversation context the subagent never had
• Subagent output merged without checking it against acceptance criteria
• Combined result never tested as a whole
• No source-of-truth plan; lost track of what each agent did

Verification

• Only independent tasks were dispatched in parallel; dependent ones sequenced
• Each brief was self-contained (goal, context, skill, paths, acceptance criteria)
• Each subagent had one clearly scoped deliverable
• Results were integrated and verified against acceptance criteria
• The combined result passes its tests; the plan was kept current