Parallel Execution Patterns

When to Load

• Trigger: Multi-agent tasks, concurrent operations, spawning subagents, parallelizing independent work
• Skip: Single-step tasks or sequential workflows with no parallelization opportunity

Core Concept

Parallel execution spawns multiple subagents simultaneously using the Agent tool (named Task before Claude Code 2.1.63; Task still works as an alias). Subagents run in the background by default, so N tasks run concurrently, dramatically reducing total execution time.

Critical Rule: ALL Agent calls MUST be in a SINGLE assistant message for true parallelism. If the calls are in separate messages, they launch one after another.

Execution Protocol

Step 1: Identify Parallelizable Tasks

Before spawning, verify tasks are independent: