dispatch-parallel-agents

Skill: Dispatch Parallel Agents

This skill parallelizes independent work across multiple subagents. Each agent gets a focused scope, isolated context, and a clear deliverable.

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When to Use

Use when:

• 2+ independent tasks exist that do not share state
• Each task can be understood and completed without context from the others
• Tasks do not edit the same files

Do not use when:

• Failures are related (fixing one might fix others -- investigate together first)
• Tasks require understanding the full system state
• Agents would interfere with each other (editing the same files, using the same resources)
• You are in exploratory mode and do not yet know what is broken

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Execution Model

Roles

• Primary (coordinator)

  • Identifies independent problem domains
  • Crafts focused prompts for each agent
  • Reviews results and integrates changes
  • Resolves conflicts if agents touched overlapping code

• Subagents (workers)

  • Each receives a scoped task with all necessary context
  • Works independently without knowledge of other agents
  • Returns a summary of findings and changes

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Workflow

Step 1: Identify Independent Domains

Group tasks by what they affect. Each domain must be independent -- fixing one must not affect the others.

Example:

• Domain A: Fix stats page header styling
• Domain B: Update billing page layout
• Domain C: Add admin role detection

These are independent because they touch different files and different logic.

Step 2: Craft Agent Prompts

Each agent prompt must be:

• Focused -- one clear problem domain, not "fix everything"
• Self-contained -- all context needed to understand the problem (file paths, error messages, expected behavior)
• Constrained -- explicit boundaries on what the agent should and should not change
• Output-specific -- what the agent should return (summary, file list, verification result)

Step 3: Dispatch

Launch all agents in a single message with multiple Agent tool calls. This ensures true parallel execution.

Step 4: Review and Integrate

When agents return:

1. Read each agent's summary
2. Check for conflicts (did agents edit the same code?)
3. Verify changes work together (run build, run tests)
4. Integrate all changes

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Rules

1. Independence is mandatory: If tasks share state or files, do not parallelize. Process sequentially instead.
2. Focused prompts: Each agent gets exactly what it needs. Do not dump full session context into agent prompts.
3. Verify after integration: Always run the build and relevant tests after merging all agent outputs. Agents cannot verify cross-agent interactions.
4. Do not over-parallelize: 2-3 agents is typical. More than 5 agents indicates the tasks should be structured differently (e.g., as a plan with phases).
5. Conflicts require manual resolution: If two agents edited the same file, the primary resolves the conflict -- do not blindly apply both changes.