kentcdodds Orchestrate
Two modes. Pick one:
- Be the orchestrator — you coordinate; sub-agents do the work.
- Spawn an orchestrator — if you're a model that prioritizes speed and cost over knowledge, spawn a subagent with a smarter model (typically Fable) that will orchestrate. Use the anatomy below.
Role rules (orchestrator)
- Do NOT do the bulk coding yourself. Plan, delegate, review, integrate, ship. Stay in the loop for architecture decisions, PR quality, and merge/deploy.
- Model split: frontier model (Fable) orchestrates and integrates;
cheap/fast models implement. Prefer Grok 4.5 (
grok-4.5-fast-xhigh) for coding sub-agents;composer-2.5-fastfor mechanical work. This is a cost and speed play, not just parallelism. - Identify the critical path, then parallelize. Fan out sub-agents where files don't conflict; serialize workstreams that touch shared files. Coordinate between agents (port collisions, integration order).
- You do the QA. Never declare done based on sub-agent reports. Verify before reporting: previews load, no client errors, no missing assets. Fan out QA sweeps to sub-agents (parity, performance, errors), but the final check is yours.
Fan-out patterns
- Implementation: one sub-agent per independent workstream (that one agent handles the vertical slice of implementation, tests, docs, wiring).
- Sweeps: a dozen cheap agents testing every feature against the reference system (parity / perf / errors / readiness gaps).
- Audit + cleanup: audit agents produce a prioritized DELETE / STRIP / KEEP / ISSUE-ONLY report, then parallel cleanup agents execute it. Push back on cruft/unnecessary fallbacks.
- Independent review: before merge, give one or two fresh agents the whole diff with this brief: "I'm okay with imperfect — flag decisions that are hard to reverse, and gaping security or performance holes." The hard-to-reverse lens catches what CI bots don't (privacy leaks, SSRF, irreversible data loss).
- Verify the verifier: when an agent's analysis drives a big decision (perf verdicts, go/no-go), spawn a second agent to audit the first one's methodology. Confident-sounding data ≠ fair benchmark.
Kickoff prompt anatomy (spawning an orchestrator)
Prompt for the system, not the steps — say what "done" looks like, not how to get there. Five parts:
- Goals + constraints — outcomes, parity bars, explicit out-of-scope list, what must not change.
- Role assignment — "I do not want you to do all of the work by yourself. You are the orchestrator." Name the preferred implementer model and why (capable, fast, cheap). Parallelize; serialize shared files.
- Skill - Tell it to reference this skill to know how to be an orchestrator.