Agent hierarchy

A method for standing up an orchestrator → specialist-subagent hierarchy, extracted from a working implementation of ~24 agents over a 1,500-file monorepo, machine-checked on every PR.

The whole method in one paragraph

Split agents by write surface, not by topic. Two classes only: builders, which edit inside exactly one exclusive surface and never commit, and reviewers, which are permanently read-only and can always run in parallel. The orchestrator — the main chat — is the sole committer. Write the surface map before any charters, keep it in one Markdown file, and enforce it with a script that runs in CI. Each row also carries an authority — autonomous, proposes, or escalates — which answers the separate question of whether that agent's work may land without a decision; most rows are autonomous, and gating everything makes the gate meaningless. Producer and auditor are never the same agent. For each class of fact, exactly one file owns it and everyone else derives.

Why topic splits fail