Use case

Ship parallel features

TL;DR

Three features that each take two hours of agent time finish in about two and a half hours in parallel, instead of six and a half one after another. The catch is that agents sharing one folder overwrite each other's files. Pane gives every agent its own git worktree on its own branch, so they can all write at once and conflicts only show up when you merge. Make one pane per feature, review each as it finishes, and merge the safest first.

You want to ship features A, B and C. Each takes about two hours of agent time and twenty minutes of your review. One after another, that's six and a half hours; in parallel, about two and a half. The maths is easy. The blocker is the working copy.

The problem

Agents sharing one folder overwrite each other. A worktree each fixes it.

Agents stepping on each other. If two agents write to the same folder, one agent edits src/auth/login.ts, the other reads it, writes its own version, and one agent's work is lost.

The worktree fix. A git worktree gives each agent its own checkout on its own branch. Both can write at the same time. Conflicts only show up at merge time, when you're ready for them, instead of mid-task.

Walkthrough

One pane per feature, review as each finishes, merge the safest first.

  1. 1Press Ctrl+N and create a pane named feature/auth. Pane makes a worktree on a new branch. Start Claude Code with Ctrl+Alt+3 and give it the auth spec.
  2. 2Do the same for feature/billing and feature/notifications. To make several panes from one base branch at once, raise the Panes count in the dialog.
  3. 3All three agents now write in their own worktrees, with no file collisions.
  4. 4Move between panes with Ctrl+Tab, or jump straight to one with Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9. The dots in the sidebar show which are working, finished or waiting, and a desktop notification tells you when one needs you.
  5. 5When an agent finishes, open Changes with Ctrl+Shift+B and review each file's diff.
  6. 6Commit with Ctrl+Shift+K and push with Ctrl+Shift+U. Repeat for each finished pane.
  7. 7Merge the lowest-risk branch first, for example notifications, then auth, then billing. Ctrl+Shift+M squash-merges a pane to main and closes it.
Agents running in parallelEach pane runs the agent's real terminal UI, with several panes going at once.Pane 2.4.155 on Windows 11, repo inside WSL2

When this breaks down

Independent features parallelize well. Shared files need an order.

Parallel features are safe when the features don't share files. Sequence the work when two of them touch the same thing:

  • → Shared schema changes. If auth and billing both change db/schema.sql, let one land first and rebase the other on top.
  • → Shared types. If one feature adds a type another imports, the second compiles against the old type until you merge. Fine for additions, risky for structural changes.
  • → Shared infrastructure. Config files, environment schemas and CI definitions edited by two agents at once will conflict. Do those one at a time.

More on how isolation works: what is worktree isolation? For other tools' take on parallel work, see Pane vs Conductor.

Sources

Corrections
If anything here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we'll fix it and update the date at the top. Open an issue on GitHub
Sources

frequently asked questions

or
Download*
Windows SmartScreen warningDirect downloads can show a SmartScreen warning while Pane is unsigned. Pane is fully open source, so you can audit the code and build from source yourself.1. Click More info2. Click Run anyway3. Continue the installerThe PowerShell install downloads the official release directly and avoids most browser download friction.npm global install
Paste that in PowerShell.Linux

By Parsa Khazaeepoul, co-founder of Pane. .