Guide
AI coding agent orchestration: what it is and how much you need
Orchestrating coding agents means coordinating several of them working at the same time. In practice it is five jobs: start them, isolate their work, watch which need you, approve what they ask to do, and combine the results. How much tooling you need depends on how many agents you run and how much you let them run unattended.
The five jobs
- Start. One terminal per agent, or a tool that opens them. Sending the same prompt to several is a convenience here.
- Isolate. Agents do not know about each other, so give each its own worktree and branch, or split work by folder.
- Watch. A waiting agent does nothing. You need to know which one is waiting, working or done without reading every terminal.
- Approve. Permission prompts arrive in every session. Answering them in one place saves the most time. See permission prompts across sessions.
- Combine. Review each branch and merge. This stays human in most workflows.
Three levels
| Level | What you do | What helps |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Hands on (2 to 5 agents) | You assign tasks, watch and approve | Worktrees plus a grid or dashboard; a side-by-side setup |
| 2. Managed branches | A tool creates a branch per task and helps you review | Apps such as Superset, Conductor or Claude Squad; see the tools compared |
| 3. Unattended | Agents run from schedules or events and report back | CI integrations and scheduled or cloud agents, with strict permissions and review gates |
Where Paneherd fits
Paneherd is level 1 inside VS Code or Cursor: it starts CLI sessions in a grid, broadcasts a prompt, shows each pane's status, gathers Claude Code permission prompts into one inbox (Pro), warns before two sessions edit the same file (Pro), and keeps a phone remote so you can answer away from the desk. It does not plan work, assign tasks to agents on its own (beyond handing a queued prompt to the first free session), isolate branches or merge. If you need those, see level 2.
Start simpler than you think
Add the next layer only when the current one hurts. Two agents in two worktrees need no framework. Watch your plan limits as you scale: orchestration spends them faster (how parallel sessions use the limits).
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between orchestration and subagents?
Subagents split work up inside one session. Orchestration here means coordinating separate sessions, possibly of different agents.