Dispatch — Orchestrator as Manager

The orchestrator's job is experience sharing and team health, not prompt engineering. Workers are specialists. Trust them. Relay what they learn. Unblock them when stuck. Synthesize what they produce.

For the delegation prompt template and pre-send verification, activate the /agent-orchestration:agent-orchestration skill.

Two Dispatch Modes

flowchart TD
    Start(["Work to dispatch"]) --> Q{"Is there a SAM task file<br>for this work?"}
    Q -->|"Yes — SAM plan exists"| SAM["SAM Dispatch<br>Minimal prompt — task file has everything"]
    Q -->|"No — ad-hoc work"| AdHoc["Ad-Hoc Dispatch<br>Use delegation template from<br>/agent-orchestration:agent-orchestration"]
    SAM --> SAMPrompt["Agent prompt:<br>'You are working on P{N}/T{M}'<br>Agent loads task via sam_read —<br>acceptance criteria, context, verification steps all there"]
    AdHoc --> AdHocPrompt["Write OBSERVATIONS + DEFINITION OF SUCCESS +<br>CONTEXT per agent-orchestration template"]
    SAMPrompt --> Team["TeamCreate and spawn workers"]
    AdHocPrompt --> Team

Manager Responsibilities

1 — Set Up the Team

TeamCreate(team_name="feature-slug-wave-1")

Name the team after the work and wave number. One team per parallel wave.

Fetch-once rule: Before spawning any workers, call backlog_view once per issue that will be worked in this session. Store each result in context keyed by issue number. Do NOT call backlog_view again for any issue already fetched — use the stored data for all wave iterations, prompt construction, and relay building. If a backlog_update changes an item's state mid-session, replace the cached value with a single new backlog_view call for that issue only.

2 — Spawn Workers

Each worker gets exactly the context needed — no more.

SAM dispatch (task file is the delegation):

Agent(
  team_name="feature-slug-wave-1",
  name="T42-worker",
  prompt="Your ROLE_TYPE is sub-agent. You are working on P500/T42."
)

The agent calls sam_read to load the task. All acceptance criteria, verification steps, and context live in the task file.

Ad-hoc dispatch: follow the delegation template from /agent-orchestration:agent-orchestration — OBSERVATIONS, DEFINITION OF SUCCESS, CONTEXT.

3 — Relay Discoveries Between Waves

Workers learn things during execution. Relay those discoveries to the next wave — this is experience sharing.

flowchart TD
    Wave1(["Wave 1 workers complete"]) --> Collect["Collect discoveries:<br>- APIs that behaved unexpectedly<br>- Files that needed changes<br>- Constraints discovered during work<br>- Patterns found"]
    Collect --> Q{"Are any discoveries<br>relevant to Wave 2 tasks?"}
    Q -->|"Yes"| Inject["Inject as OBSERVATIONS into Wave 2 prompts<br>Label source: 'T42 worker reported: ...'"]
    Q -->|"No"| Skip["Spawn Wave 2 with original task context"]
    Inject --> Wave2(["Spawn Wave 2 workers"])
    Skip --> Wave2

Workers report what they observed — relay facts, not interpretations, to the next wave.

4 — Handle Blockers

When a worker sends a blocker message:

flowchart TD
    Blocker(["Worker sends blocker"]) --> Classify{"What is blocking them?"}
    Classify -->|"Missing information the orchestrator has"| Relay["SendMessage with the missing context<br>Worker resumes"]
    Classify -->|"Conflict with another worker's changes"| Resolve["Read both workers' summaries<br>Decide which approach wins<br>SendMessage resolution to affected workers"]
    Classify -->|"Scope question — out of task boundaries"| Bound["Confirm scope in task file via sam_read<br>SendMessage: stay within T{M} boundaries or<br>create a new task for the discovered work"]
    Classify -->|"Hard blocker — cannot proceed"| Escalate["SendMessage shutdown<br>Capture blocker as backlog item<br>Adjust wave plan"]

5 — Synthesize Results

When all workers return:

1. Read each agent summary — check STATUS: DONE or STATUS: BLOCKED
2. Identify conflicts — two workers edited the same file or made incompatible changes
3. Run verification (tests, linter) across the full changeset
4. Relay synthesis findings to user or feed into next wave

File pointer pattern: instruct workers to write findings to ~/.dh/projects/{slug}/reports/ (resolved via dh_paths.reports_dir()) and return the path. Read reports, not inline summaries, to keep orchestrator context lean.

6 — Clean Up

TeamDelete()

Shut workers down via SendMessage before deleting the team.

When to Dispatch

Dispatch when:

• 2+ tasks that can run without waiting on each other
• Parallel reviews (security, performance, coverage)
• Multiple SAM tasks in the same wave (check sam_ready)
• Research tracks that don't depend on each other

Explore first, then dispatch when:

• The root cause is unknown — dispatching with wrong diagnosis wastes workers
• Tasks share state — workers would conflict on the same files

Common Mistakes

Micromanaging — "Use sed to edit line 42, then grep to verify." Workers are specialists. Describe what success looks like; let them determine how.

No discovery relay — Wave 2 workers miss context Wave 1 workers discovered. Always check if Wave 1 output changes what Wave 2 needs to know.

Ignoring blocker messages — Workers go idle waiting for a response. Check messages between waves.

Pre-gathering data — Running diagnostics before delegating wastes orchestrator context. Workers gather their own data.