https://toddschiller.com/2026-08-12T00:00:00-04:00Human ✘ Artificial Intelligence2026-08-12T00:00:00-04:002026-08-12T00:00:00-04:00Todd Schillertag:toddschiller.com,2026-08-12:/blog/parallel-agents-diverge-converge.html

Running coding agents in parallel is closer to a team of different developers than one developer multitasking, so plan a deliberate converge phase after the diverge phase.

<p>Running coding agents in parallel is less like one developer juggling features and more like a team of different developers building at the same time independently.</p> <p>Even when the agents share the same system prompt and the same skills, they diverge fast. LLMs are stochastic, and the divergence compounds with every decision.</p> <p>Spec-Driven Development and Domain-Driven Design help. They give each agent a global view of what the others are doing and a shared, ubiquitous language. But in practice, compounding drift erodes coherence fast.</p> <p>The only way to keep your codebase sane is to plan deliberate converge phases.</p> <p>Here are my tips for diverge-converge:</p> <ul> <li>Put new features behind a feature flag so agents can iterate on the intermediate result cleanly</li> <li>Define protocols and interfaces first to contain where drift can happen</li> <li>Use static analysis and linters to bound architectural and stylistic drift</li> <li>Use a skill to update your specs and ubiquitous language based on the gaps the diverge phase exposed</li> <li>Use a skill to identify and prioritize the tech debt the diverge phase introduced</li> </ul> <p>What's your approach to building features in parallel with coding agents?</p> <!-- markdownlint-disable MD013 --> <figure> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://toddschiller.com/assets/images/parallel-agents-diverge-converge/parallel-agents-diverge-converge-landscape-2400.png" alt="Whiteboard-style diagram titled Parallel agents drift, plan to converge. From a single Shared start node (same prompt, specs, skills), three colored paths labeled agent 1, agent 2, and agent 3 fan outward through a pink Diverge zone where drift compounds with every decision, reach their widest spread, then are pulled back together through a green Converge zone into one Coherent result node. A footer reads: converge with feature flags, interfaces first, linters, and a spec and debt refresh."> <figcaption>Parallel coding agents fan out during the diverge phase, then a deliberate converge phase pulls them back into a coherent result.</figcaption> </figure> <!-- markdownlint-enable MD013 -->