Choose the smallest route that provides the fresh judgment, parallelism, or durable observation the user requested. A skill defines the workflow; the selected backend owns execution.
Route the work
- Direct work is the default when the task does not benefit from an independent judgment or concurrent lane.
- One focused delegate uses the host's native one-off delegation when
available. When the user requests Grok, invoke
grok-subagent; do not duplicate its CLI and central-review procedure here. If the current agent is already Grok, work directly unless a fresh isolated judgment is material. - Pi subagents fit two or more independent read-only lanes or a
scout-worker-fresh-reviewer loop. Use this route only when Pi's
subagenttool is available. Otherwise recommend it without pretending to execute it. - Herdr is a top-level session control surface. Control it only when the
user explicitly asks for Herdr, then invoke the
herdrskill. A Herdr-hosted Pi session may own Pi children; Herdr observes that lifecycle rather than becoming a second child orchestrator.
If the preferred backend is unavailable, state that constraint and use the smallest available route that preserves the requested independence. Ask before switching to a materially different model, service, repository, or execution scope.
Preserve ownership
- Keep exactly one writer in a working tree. Put parallel writers in isolated worktrees created before delegation.
- Give scouts and reviewers fresh context and read-only authority. A single writer may inherit or fork the approved plan when that context is useful.
- Start a fresh mutation agent instead of reusing a bloated long-lived session.
- Give every delegate one bounded outcome, relevant paths, existing changes to preserve, exact verification, and a stopping condition.
- Keep nested delegation off unless the task defines a bounded fan-out and one parent remains responsible for synthesis.
- For analysis, review, or planning requests, keep every delegate read-only.
The top-level owner independently reads the final diff, runs the required checks, resolves conflicting reports, and owns commit, push, publication, and other external effects unless the user explicitly assigns them elsewhere.
Complete the collaboration
Report which route ran, which agents received mutation authority, how isolation was enforced, what evidence the owner verified directly, and any work that still requires user or runtime validation. Completion requires the owner to account for every changed file and every failed or missing lane.