Workflow in a Minute: Parallel agents

In one sentence

Parallel agents are multiple coding agents working at the same time on partitioned tasks with isolated workspaces.

Why it matters

Serial agent work leaves capacity idle. Blind parallelism creates merge hell. The win is intentional partitioning—not simply opening more terminals.

How it works

Use parallelism when:

• tasks touch different modules;
• each task has its own verification;
• integration order is clear.

Avoid parallelism when:

• both tasks must edit the same core file;
• the design is still undecided;
• you cannot review two diffs carefully.

Infrastructure: separate worktrees/branches, clear owners, PR-based merge.

Example

Good split: Agent A adds an API route test; Agent B updates docs for that route after the interface is stable—or in parallel only if the contract is already fixed.

Bad split: two agents “improve auth” in the same middleware file.

Agentic coding use

Orchestration systems exist to assign partitions, track status, and enforce verification. Git worktrees provide the filesystem substrate; workflow discipline provides the rest.

Watch out

Parallelism amplifies weak specs. Two vague tasks become two divergent messes. Specify first, then fan out.