Running an agent by hand means doing four things before the interesting part: get to the right directory, put the code in the right state, choose a model, and explain what to do. Dispatch is the name for having that assembled automatically from the task itself.
What has to travel with the task
- A working directory, which for parallel work means git worktree per agent rather than the checkout you are using.
- A model and an effort level, decided per task rather than globally: a mechanical rename does not need deep reasoning and should not be billed for it.
- The brief, which is what should happen, where to look, and how anyone will know it worked. The part that cannot be automated, and the part that decides whether the result is any good.
- A definition of done that the agent can be held to.
Capacity is part of it
Dispatch without a ceiling is a way to make a laptop unusable. Each agent is a process with a model connection, a checkout and usually a dev server; eight of them do not run eight times faster, they thrash. Concurrency has to be sized to the machine, and ideally to whether the machine is currently being used by a person.
The brief is the whole game
An agent given a vague task returns vague work, and the loop that follows costs more than writing the task properly would have. The rule that survives contact with reality: if you cannot say how you will check it, it is not ready to be dispatched.
In Topics
A task on the board can be assigned to an agent, which picks it up with its worktree, model and effort already set, and moves its own card to review when it has committed something and attached evidence.