Orchestrate

Multi-agent orchestration

Overview

Decompose -> waves -> reduce -> gate.

Rules

• Use parallel fan-out only after the decomposition/value gate passes.
• Preflight dependencies/shared errors.
• No concurrent shared-state writes. Partition authorised writers into repository .worktrees/<task-agent>; otherwise use a serial applier.
• Parallel lanes stop ready-to-merge. The chair merges serially, refreshes the next branch from current main, then reruns checks and reviews after commit/tree changes.
• Keep topology exact. One chair; leaders settle recursive obligations. Handoff is a generation-bound operator action.
• Answer-bearing external work uses Fabric request/reply; Herdr only wakes. Pane injection is fire-and-forget steering. Without callback, record FABRIC-ROUNDTRIP-UNAVAILABLE and collect an artifact.
• Record worker cwd; never assume repository.
• Workers write full output to files; return a digest/path.
• Liveness: size proves nothing. Compare CPU and session-log mtime; see worker-liveness.md. A detached task is not dead: check the PID before reusing a worktree.
• Cross-family follows the HARNESS risk ladder. Targeted lenses plus other primary; distinct family when available; record terminal skips.
• Objective checks outrank opinions. You own the final call.
• Discover current model/tool options at runtime.

When This Pays

Before parallel dispatch, require independent information or artefacts; stable interfaces and dependencies; non-overlapping writes; independently checkable return contracts; and expected information gain greater than coordination, shared-state and tool-density cost.

If the gate fails, keep serial ownership with the chair or one specialist; shared-error or tightly coupled work stays serial. Choose the smallest passing topology.

Adaptive Loop

1. Preflight authority/isolation/disclosure/receipts.
2. Use native same-session subagents first. Use same-family CLI only for auth/preflight smoke tests.
3. Dispatch parallel read/partitioned-write and serial shared-state waves; adapt leaders on evidence and keep one chair/stage owner.
4. Reduce to a claim/conflict map; verify the live tree before repair.
5. Add only informative waves: narrow, repair, verify, cross-family broad review, or Document update wave.
6. Final gate: no untriaged P0/P1, missing anchors, unresolved doc drift, unrecorded family status or user gate. Record CROSS-FAMILY-NOT-RUN when unavailable.

Worker Contract

Every worker gets task class, route (tier, model, effort, route receipt), identity, objective, authority, paths, output, checks, stop and budget; validate payloads, never infer permission. See orchestration-contract.md.

Autonomous-implementation mode

Pulls accepted/ready issues through implement unattended; merge stays user-controlled, deferring to the nearest repository merge policy. Lower authority than autopilot's run-until-STOP loop. See autonomous-implementation.md.

References

Load relevant references only: trigger-boundary.md, routing-and-tiers.md, codex-subagents.md, orchestration-contract.md, dynamic-workflows.md, paired-primary.md, herdr-panes.md, layering-and-context.md, retrieval-and-tool-routing.md, verification.md, cli-headless.md, memory-scratchpad.md, evaluation-and-observability.md, domain-adaptation.md, worker-liveness.md, and autonomous-implementation.md. scripts/ and evals/ hold helpers/guards; cf_dispatch.sh is degraded fallback/preflight only.

Adapter-absent path

Without Console, Herdr or GitHub, emit the skill-owned portable kind. It grants no Fabric authority or second task owner.