Deep-dive report on parallel coding agents: worktree isolation doubles costs, merge conflicts dominate
weswinder · x · 2026-11-06
A research-style report (shared as screenshots) addresses how people sync multiple Codex/Claude agents on one repo. Key findings: isolation-based setups (worktrees, sandboxes, Phoenix stacks) roughly double costs and skip agents' awareness of each other, with wait-stacks often bypassed; merge conflicts are the dominant loss, with sorting workflows cutting constructed conflict rates from 25-50% to 5-10%; coordination vs parallel split saves 21% in a small study; concurrency beyond 2-10 agents shows sublinear or negative throughput. Recommendation: sort work before agents collide, and build a conflict dashboard before buying coordination tooling.
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