Workflow Wave Dispatch
Sequential waves, not parallel fan-out, when the work has real dependencies. This skill is the workflow-side scheduling view: which waves exist, what order they run in, and what to do when a gate fails.
The dispatch discipline — the per-wave gate set, the research-before-WO
gate, the ~10-line inline-fix threshold, the stable shared-file exclusion
list, and Return Contract reuse — lives in
agent-patterns-plugin:wave-based-dispatch. This skill does not restate it;
it schedules around it.
When to Use This Skill
| Use this skill when… | Use the alternative when… |
|---|---|
| Enumerating the waves and their ordering for a dependent landing | You need the per-wave gate set / dispatch discipline — use agent-patterns-plugin:wave-based-dispatch |
| Deciding what to do when a wave's gate fails | Briefing the agents inside a wave — use agent-patterns-plugin:parallel-agent-dispatch |
| Scheduling a research probe ahead of the implementation waves it unblocks | A tool holds an exclusive lock and the wave must pre-dump it — use agent-patterns-plugin:exclusive-lock-dispatch |
parallel-agent-dispatch is the right call inside a wave. Waves are the
layer above it — they answer "which agents run together, in what order"
before parallel-agent-dispatch answers "how each agent is briefed."
Wave Structure
Wave 1 (research)
└── Single agent or small fan-out → artefacts in tmp/
└── Gate: artefacts exist, agent returned a clean contract
Wave 2 (foundation)
└── Parallel fan-out against wave-1 artefacts
└── Gate: build green, tests green, tracker advanced
Wave 3 (extension)
└── Parallel fan-out referencing wave-2 types/APIs
└── Gate: smoke recipes pass, clean tree
Wave N …
Each wave is itself a parallel-agent-dispatch call. This skill covers
wave scheduling: which waves exist, what gates between them, what to
do when a gate fails. The gate set itself is the six-gate table in
agent-patterns-plugin:wave-based-dispatch § Six-Gate Verification Table.
Scheduling Heuristics
- Put the lock-holder (Ghidra, migration, bulk taskwarrior) alone in
its wave. See
agent-patterns-plugin:exclusive-lock-dispatch. - Put the research wave before any implementation wave that depends
on its artefacts (the research-before-WO gate in
agent-patterns-plugin:wave-based-dispatchexplains why the downstream WO's size collapses once the probe lands). - Put foundation (new types, new APIs, new files that others will import) in the earliest implementation wave.
- Put extensions (new call sites, new tests, new docs) in later waves.
- Inside a single wave, fan out to the widest safe parallelism that
parallel-agent-dispatchallows.
Schema-Constrained Agents Under Rate-Limit Storms
Schema-constrained agent() calls — agents bound to a StructuredOutput
schema — are fragile under rate-limit storms (issue
#1463). A
rate-limit hit that occurs before the agent emits its StructuredOutput
is reported as a hard parse failure: the caller receives no partial output
and the agent's work is unrecoverable from the schema path, even when
substantial work was done inside the agent's context window.
Why this matters at the wave layer. A wide wave of schema-bound agents
(e.g. 8–10 concurrent structured-output extractors) creates a rate-limit
storm risk. If the storm wipes half the wave, the gate fails and the
orchestrator has no partial results to salvage — unlike a plain agent()
call where the worktree holds the work.
Blast-radius containment — apply at wave-scheduling time:
| Heuristic | Guidance |
|---|---|
| Wave size | Cap schema-bound waves at ≤ 5 concurrent agents — the same ceiling parallel-agent-dispatch § Concurrent Rate-Limit Risk sets for [1m]-context parents (measured on Opus 4.7; schema-bound agents need it most because a cut-off leaves no partial result, #1463). Fable 5.1 parents run 1M context by default, so the hazard applies; not re-measured on Fable 5.1 — keep the cap until a run shows the storm no longer occurs, then raise with evidence |
| Stagger | Add ~30 s between launches in the same wave to spread the token-request window |
| Wave splits | If the fan-out genuinely needs >5 schema-bound calls, dispatch in sequential sub-waves of ≤ 5 — gate each sub-wave before launching the next |
| Retry shape | On a rate-limit partial failure, recovery-dispatch only the failed agents (not the whole wave) — the successful siblings' outputs are valid |
For concurrency caps, wave-splitting mechanics, and the recovery-dispatch
routine for rate-limited agents, see
agent-patterns-plugin:parallel-agent-dispatch § Concurrent rate-limit risk
and its references/failure-recovery.md § Concurrent rate-limit risk —
recovery-dispatch routine. (Named, not path-linked: a relative path into
another plugin is dead for anyone who installed only one of the two —
.claude/rules/skill-consolidation.md § 2.) Do not duplicate that guidance
here.
Gate Failure: Roll Back, Don't Paper Over
Every wave ends with a gate (the six-gate set lives in
agent-patterns-plugin:wave-based-dispatch). No brief for wave N+1 is
written before wave N's gate passes.
A gate failure rolls back to "fix in place, retry the gate" — never to "dispatch wave N+1 and paper over the failure." If the wave as a whole is un-recoverable, revert it and re-brief.
Whether a returned issue is fixed inline or filed as a follow-up WO for
the next wave is the ~10-line inline-fix threshold — see
agent-patterns-plugin:wave-based-dispatch § The ~10-Line Inline-Fix
Threshold.
Shared Mechanics (owned by wave-based-dispatch)
These are defined once in agent-patterns-plugin:wave-based-dispatch and
referenced — never restated — when scheduling waves:
| Mechanic | Where |
|---|---|
| Per-wave gate set | § Six-Gate Verification Table |
| Research-before-WO gate | § The Research-Before-WO Gate |
| Inline-fix vs follow-up WO | § The ~10-Line Inline-Fix Threshold |
| Stable shared-file exclusion list across waves | § Stable Shared-File Exclusion List |
| Return Contract reuse | parallel-agent-dispatch § Return Contract |
Quick Reference
Orchestrator Checklist (scheduling)
- Waves enumerated with explicit dependencies identified
- Research wave scheduled first if any scope depends on tool output
- Lock-holder isolated in its own wave
- Foundation scheduled before extensions
- A gate defined for every wave boundary (set per
wave-based-dispatch) - No brief for wave N+1 written until wave N's gate passes
- Gate failure → fix in place and retry, never dispatch-over
Common Scheduling Mistakes
| Mistake | Correct Approach |
|---|---|
| Bundling "decompile X, then implement Y" in one wave | Split into a research wave + an implementation wave |
| Dispatching wave N+1 after a gate failure to "patch over it" | Fix in place, retry the gate; revert and re-brief if unrecoverable |
| Scheduling extensions before the foundation they import | Foundation in the earliest implementation wave, extensions later |
| Running the lock-holder concurrently with its consumers | Lock-holder alone in its wave; downstream reads pre-dumped artefacts |
| Enforcing the wave boundary by discipline alone | Express it as a parallel() barrier |
Related
agent-patterns-plugin:wave-based-dispatch— the dispatch discipline and the shared between-wave gate set this skill schedules aroundagent-patterns-plugin:parallel-agent-dispatch— intra-wave dispatch contractagent-patterns-plugin:exclusive-lock-dispatch— pre-dump pattern for lock-contending wavesagent-patterns-plugin:agent-teams— implicit-team / SendMessage mechanics that waves sit on top oftools-plugin:cli-smoke-recipes— smoke-gate mechanics between waves.claude/rules/parallel-safe-queries.md— empty-result exit codes inside gates
Evidence: a six-wave landing shipped six dependent work-orders in one day with zero merge conflicts and exactly one inline fix. Earlier attempts without wave discipline produced two-day cycles dominated by re-work when later WOs broke earlier interfaces.