What Running Parallel AI Agents Feels Like - Three Tiny Wars
Three Tiny Wars
Running parallel AI agents does not feel like delegation. It feels like three tiny wars happening simultaneously. Each agent has its own front, its own unexpected problems, and its own momentum that you need to track without losing the thread of the others.
The Reality of Multi-Agent Work
The marketing pitch for parallel agents is elegant - spin up three agents, divide the work, get three times the output. The reality is messier. Agent one hits a build error and needs guidance. Agent two has drifted from the spec and is building something you did not ask for. Agent three is actually doing great but just consumed your entire API rate limit.
You are not a manager delegating to a competent team. You are an air traffic controller watching three planes that might collide at any moment.
Why It Still Works
Despite the chaos, parallel agents genuinely multiply output. The key insight is that the wars are tiny. Each problem is small enough to resolve quickly - a clarification here, a redirect there, a quick context injection. The overhead of managing three agents is real but still far less than doing all three tasks sequentially yourself.
The experienced parallel agent user learns to triage. Check on the agent most likely to go off track first. Let the reliable one run unsupervised. Keep the volatile one on a short leash.
Making Peace with the Chaos
The mistake is expecting parallel agents to feel calm and organized. They will not. The right mental model is controlled chaos - multiple streams of productive work that occasionally need your attention but mostly run on their own.
Accept the three tiny wars. The alternative is one slow, peaceful march that takes three times as long.
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Fazm is an open source macOS AI agent. Open source on GitHub.