Orchestrate Engineering

Start with the delegation decision

1. Read applicable AGENTS.md files and the task’s acceptance criteria.
2. Map dependencies before creating workers.
3. Use one agent when the task is small, tightly coupled, or dominated by shared-file edits.
4. Delegate only when at least two workstreams are genuinely independent, noisy investigation should be isolated, or specialized review materially improves coverage.
5. Explain the chosen topology briefly before starting workers.

Subagents normally consume more total tokens than a comparable single-agent run. Optimize for fewer failed loops, cleaner context, better coverage, or lower elapsed time—not the highest agent count.

Choose a topology

• Use fan-out/fan-in for independent read-only research, review, triage, or log analysis.
• Use a pipeline when exploration, planning, implementation, testing, and review depend on prior outputs.
• Use partitioned implementation only after shared interfaces are stable and each worker owns exclusive files or subsystems.

Read references/context-budget.md when selecting a topology, preparing worker context, defining summaries, or evaluating efficiency.