Three Dials: Parallel Agents Without Merge Hell
Fifth installment of the ADLC series: orchestrating parallel agents without "merge hell". Williams sets out three coupled dials — cost (model selection), wall-clock time (parallelization width), and accuracy (contract quality) — and an architectural principle: "control flow is code; judgment is models" (deterministic scripts orchestrate, models supply only judgment). Four lanes (frontier Contract Desk, single-writer Builder Pool, shared Prosecution Pool, sequential Integrator), a merge-conflict forecast built from four signals (certified width typically 3-5 agents), and consensus-based disambiguation across N cheap agents rather than clarification questions.
Chris Williams (@voodootikigod)