You want to ship feature A, feature B, and feature C. Each takes roughly two hours of agent time and twenty minutes of your review. Serially that is six and a half hours. In parallel it is about two and a half. The math is simple. The blocker is the working copy.
the problem
agents stepping on each other
If two Claude Code agents both write to the same working directory, they corrupt each other's output. Agent 1 edits src/auth/login.ts. Agent 2 reads the same file for context, then writes a different version. One agent's work wins. The other is lost.
the worktree fix
Git worktrees give each agent its own checkout of the repository on its own branch. The files do not share a directory. Both agents can write simultaneously. Conflicts only surface at merge time, when you're ready to handle them — not mid-task, when they corrupt the work.
walkthrough
→ Step 1. Open Pane.
→ Step 2. Create a pane named feature/auth. Pane creates a worktree on a new branch automatically. Launch Claude Code with the auth spec.
→ Step 3. Create a second pane named feature/billing. Same process — fresh worktree, fresh branch. Launch Claude Code with the billing spec.
→ Step 4. Create a third pane named feature/notifications. Launch Claude Code with the notifications spec.
→ Step 5. All three agents now write code in their own isolated worktrees. No file collisions.
→ Step 6. Use ⌘↑ / ⌘↓ to cycle between panes and watch progress. Desktop notifications fire when an agent needs input or finishes.
→ Step 7. When an agent finishes: press ⌘D to open the diff viewer. Review the changes.
→ Step 8. Press ⌘K to commit and push the branch. Repeat for each finished pane.
→ Step 9. Merge in order of riskiness — lowest blast radius first (notifications before auth before billing, for example).
when this breaks down
Parallel features are safe when the features are independent. The model breaks when two features touch the same shared artifact:
→ Shared schema changes. If both the auth feature and the billing feature need to alter db/schema.sql, sequence them. Let one land first, rebase the other on top.
→ Shared types. If a new type in one feature is imported by another, the importing feature will compile against the old type until a merge. Acceptable if the change is additive; risky if it's structural.
→ Shared infrastructure files. Config files, environment schemas, and CI definitions edited by two agents in parallel will conflict. Sequence those changes.
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See also: Pane vs Conductor for a comparison of parallel-agent workflows across tools. Read more about worktree isolation at /worktrees.
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