Agent Teams Orchestration (Experimental)

Status: Experimental — OFF by default (requires CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS=1) When to use: Large features where multiple teammates can work truly in parallel and the user explicitly accepts the token cost

What Are Agent Teams?

Agent Teams are coordinated background sessions with a shared task list, inter-agent messaging, and a lead/manager that assigns tasks and keeps workers in sync. Instead of the Orchestrator calling agents sequentially via Task tool, a lead agent dispatches work and teammates claim, execute, and report tasks from the shared queue independently.

This surface is experimental and off by default — enable it only by setting CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS=1 in your environment or settings.json.

How This Relates to the Other Parallelization Surfaces

GodMode maps onto four parallelization surfaces. Choose the right one for the job:

Surface	What it is	Use when
Plain subagents (Task tool)	Delegated workers inside one session, own context, return a summary	A side task would flood the main context; up to ~10 run concurrently, the rest queue
Agent teams (this skill)	Coordinated sessions, shared task list, inter-agent messaging, lead-managed	Split a project, assign pieces, keep workers in sync — persistent teammates, not one-off tasks
Dynamic workflows (skills/dynamic-workflows/)	Orchestrator-written script fans out to tens–hundreds of subagents + adversarial cross-checks	Job outgrows a handful of subagents: codebase-wide audit, large migration, cross-checked research
Agent view (claude agents)	Dispatch + monitor background sessions	Several independent hand-off tasks you check on later (research preview)

Decision guidance:

• Use plain subagents for one-off in-session side tasks (the default, always available).
• Use agent teams when you need persistent, coordinated teammates kept in sync via a shared task list across a multi-part project.
• Use dynamic workflows when a job outgrows a handful of subagents and needs fan-out at scale plus adversarial verification — trigger with the word "workflow" in a prompt or enable ultracode.
• See also the ## Parallelization section of CLAUDE.md for the cost guardrail and concurrency tiers that apply across all surfaces.

Enabling Agent Teams

Add to your environment or settings.json:

{
  "env": {
    "CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS": "1"
  }
}

Team Composition

Teammate	Role	Model	Isolation
Architect	Design & planning	opus	—
Builder	Implementation	sonnet	worktree
Validator	Code quality	sonnet	worktree
Tester	UX quality	sonnet	worktree
Scribe	Documentation	haiku	—

Recommended team size: 3–5 teammates for optimal coordination.

SharedTaskList

Tasks follow this lifecycle:

pending → in_progress → completed
                     → failed

• Dependencies: Tasks can have blockedBy arrays
• Claiming: File-locking prevents race conditions
• Auto-pickup: After completing a task, teammate picks next unblocked task

Example Task Flow

{
  "tasks": [
    {"id": "1", "name": "Design auth module", "assignee": "architect", "status": "completed"},
    {"id": "2", "name": "Implement auth API", "assignee": "builder", "blockedBy": ["1"], "status": "in_progress"},
    {"id": "3", "name": "Implement auth UI", "assignee": "builder", "blockedBy": ["1"], "status": "in_progress"},
    {"id": "4", "name": "Validate auth code", "assignee": "validator", "blockedBy": ["2", "3"], "status": "pending"},
    {"id": "5", "name": "Test auth UX", "assignee": "tester", "blockedBy": ["2", "3"], "status": "pending"}
  ]
}

Hooks for Agent Teams

Hook	Purpose	Exit Code 2
TeammateIdle	Fires when teammate about to go idle	Teammate continues working
TaskCompleted	Fires when task marked complete	Prevents completion, sends feedback

When to Use Agent Teams vs Standard Orchestration

Scenario	Use Agent Teams?
Large feature with independent modules	YES
Multiple parallel investigations	YES
Small bug fix	NO — overhead not worth it
API change (strict sequence required)	NO — sequential workflow needed
Research task	NO — single agent sufficient

Limitations

• No session resumption with in-process teammates
• Task status can lag
• Only one team per session
• No nested teams
• Token usage: ~15x standard
• Shutdown can be slow

Use skills/departments/ first when the problem is ownership and routing. Use Agent Teams only when the implementation work itself can safely run in parallel.

Best Practices

1. Break work into truly independent tasks
2. Define clear dependencies with blockedBy
3. Keep team size to 3–5 teammates
4. Use worktree isolation for all building/testing teammates
5. Reserve standard orchestration for sequential workflows (API changes)