Swarm Orchestration

Running one agent is easy. Getting five agents to work together on the same problem — without losing state, duplicating work, or deadlocking — is where most teams struggle.

This skill gives you the complete playbook for multi-agent swarm orchestration using Claude Code's TeammateTool and Task system.

What you get:

• The 7-phase lifecycle: create team → create tasks → spawn → work → coordinate → shutdown → cleanup
• Complete primitives reference: Agent, Team, Teammate, Leader, Task, Inbox, Message, Backend
• Spawn backends: in-process (invisible), tmux (visible panes), iTerm2 (split panes)
• Pipeline patterns: sequential dependencies, fan-out/fan-in, self-organizing queues
• Communication patterns: structured inbox messages, shutdown_request, idle_notification
• Coordination protocols: how leader monitors progress without polling
• Anti-patterns: why polling teammates fails, how to avoid deadlocks

Patterns covered:

• Parallel code reviews (each teammate reviews a different module)
• Sequential pipelines with dependency gates
• Self-organizing queues where teammates claim work
• Fan-out research with fan-in synthesis
• Graceful shutdown with work handoff

Includes copy-paste config templates, message schemas, and a full worked example: research team with 3 specialists reporting to a leader.