Teams as graph engineering

August 10, 2026

Multi-agent coding work is a directed acyclic graph: nodes are named teammates, edges are --after dependencies, and a supervisor drains the graph wave by wave — locally or across a device pool. That is graph engineering applied to real coding CLIs, not a slide deck. Command: agents.

Visual longform: shareable HTML edition. Stack overview: loop + graph engineering.

Why a graph

Linear chains (A then B then C) break under real product work: independent surfaces want parallelism; QA should wait on backend and frontend; a planner can add nodes mid-flight. A DAG encodes that once — true parallelism for independent nodes, joins for multi-parent deps, no circular waits.

Graph engineering designs topology (who exists, edges, ownership). Loop engineering designs how each agentic node thinks. You need both — each teammate is still a full Claude/Codex/… loop.

The edge: `--after`

Edges are declared on the dependent node. There is no --before flag — same edge, one direction. Names are required when using --after. Cycles are rejected at add time.

agents teams add feat claude "Implement /api/pricing" --name backend
agents teams add feat codex  "Build pricing UI"       --name frontend
# Multi-parent join
agents teams add feat claude "Playwright suite" --name qa --after backend,frontend

Concept	In AGI CLI
Node	Named teammate (`--name`)
Edge	`--after A` on B
Join	`--after A,B,C`
Ready set	`startReady` each wave

Wave scheduler

agents teams start --watch is a continuous DAG dispatcher: rescan disk (pick up mid-flight teams add), launch every teammate whose deps are terminal, wait, repeat until drained.

agents teams start pricing-page --watch
# --interval 8   seconds between waves (default)
# --max-waves 1000
# --json         one JSON object per wave

State machine per teammate: PENDING → RUNNING → COMPLETED | FAILED. Disk-backed meta.json so the supervisor can restart mid-flight. Drained ≠ all green — check failed count.

Distributed placement

One orchestrator owns the DAG. Placement is a separate axis from dependency:

--device X on add — pin (never second-guessed)
Team --devices a,b,c — unpinned teammates auto-schedule (reachability, load, agent installed, caps)
No viable device — fail loud, never silent fallback to local

agents teams create feat \
  --devices yosemite-s0,yosemite-s1 \
  --repo [email protected]:org/app.git \
  --enable-worktrees

agents teams add feat claude "API" --name backend  --device yosemite-s0 --worktree api
agents teams add feat claude "UI"  --name frontend --device yosemite-s1 --worktree ui
agents teams add feat claude "QA"  --name qa --after backend,frontend --worktree qa
agents teams start feat --watch

Boundary contracts

Topology without ownership is a race. --after only orders time — if A must finish before B because they edit the same files, re-cut the split. Use --enable-worktrees and unique worktree names for edit-mode teammates.

Hands-on recipe: Parallel work with teams.

Cookbook

agents teams create pricing -d "Ship /pricing" --enable-worktrees
agents teams add pricing claude "Backend" --name backend  --worktree backend
agents teams add pricing codex  "Frontend" --name frontend --worktree frontend
agents teams add pricing claude "E2E" --name qa --after backend,frontend --worktree qa
agents teams start pricing --watch

# Mid-flight graph growth
agents teams add pricing claude "Fix flake" --name bugfix --after qa --worktree bugfix

agents teams message pricing qa "Skip visual snapshot for now"
agents teams status pricing
agents sessions --teams
agents teams disband pricing