Purpose
Use Fable 5 as the lead for work whose value comes from judgment, ambiguity resolution, sustained context, or a defensible recommendation. Fable 5 can also perform difficult end-to-end work; do not delegate merely to keep its context empty. Delegate when concurrency, context isolation, fresh verification, tool specialization, or a measured cost/latency advantage improves the result.
This skill assigns model roles. parallel-subagent-orchestrator owns work
decomposition, packets, asynchronous coordination, and synthesis mechanics.
Quick Start
- State the user-visible decision or outcome and its completion bar.
- Identify the judgment core Fable 5 must own: the trade-off, risk, hypothesis, conflict, or ambiguous implementation choice.
- Read
references/lane-routing.md. Choose direct Fable 5 execution unless a separate lane has a concrete advantage. - When delegating, give each lane a bounded question, evidence contract, and stop condition. Let independent lanes run asynchronously while the lead does non-overlapping work.
- Use fresh-context verification for consequential long runs or when the lead may be anchored to its own approach. Routine work does not need a committee.
- Ground every progress and completion claim in tool output, inspected sources, or a named artifact from the current run.
- Before answering, use
references/judgment-gate.md. Resolve conflicts and make the recommendation; do not concatenate worker summaries.
Fable 5 Owns
- The decision rule: what evidence would change the answer.
- Issue framing, hidden assumptions, stakeholder and time-horizon checks.
- High-ambiguity analysis where intermediate results change the next move.
- Cross-source conflict resolution and confidence calibration.
- The final recommendation, caveat, and condition that would reverse it.
Fable 5 may also own long-context reading or implementation when keeping the work together is more valuable than parallelism. Route by task shape, not by a blanket rule that collection is beneath the lead model.
Delegate When It Helps
- Independent evidence or implementation streams can run concurrently.
- A fresh-context reviewer can test the specification or challenge anchoring.
- A support lane has materially better repository, browser, data, or execution tools for a bounded task.
- Large structured results can be reduced without fresh semantic judgment at every step.
- A lower-cost lane passes the same evidence and quality bar for routine work.
Every worker returns compact evidence: answer, sources or files inspected, decisive facts, caveats, confidence, and what remains unverified.
Long Runs
Use the harness's effort and runtime controls deliberately. Important work may benefit from higher effort; routine work may be better at medium or low effort. Do not default every lane to the maximum setting without an evaluation signal.
During long runs, give sparse outcome-based updates at real phase changes. Before claiming progress, point to the tool result or artifact that proves it. Never ask a model to reproduce, transcribe, or expose private reasoning; request evidence, assumptions, decisions, and concise rationale instead.
Output Behavior
Answer as the lead's judgment, not as a committee transcript. Put the decision or highest-impact finding first, then the evidence that moved it, the main caveat, and what would change the answer. Mention lanes only when their coverage or limitations affect trust.
Reference Files
| File | Read when | Content |
|---|---|---|
references/lane-routing.md |
Before choosing direct work, delegation, or a model lane | Current Fable 5 and support-lane decision rules and packet shapes |
references/judgment-gate.md |
Before the final answer or a follow-up wave | Evidence, conflict, progress, and recommendation checks |
references/source-notes.md |
When maintaining this skill | Model-generation sources and separation from the harness-neutral orchestrator |
Gotchas
- Do not overdelegate work Fable 5 can complete coherently in one run.
- Do not use model prestige as a substitute for sources, tests, or direct inspection.
- Do not outsource the decision or average worker opinions.
- Do not request hidden reasoning or a chain-of-thought transcript.
- Do not hide a material model or tool substitution; state it when it changes confidence, cost, latency, or reproducibility.
- Do not duplicate
parallel-subagent-orchestrator; this skill owns model-role judgment, while the parallel skill owns orchestration mechanics.