Principle
Use versioned artifacts as the meeting place for humans and agents
Shared chat is a poor substitute for shared state.
When it fits
- Humans and several agents need to coordinate work without staying in one synchronous conversation.
When to avoid it
- Not every task belongs in Git; choose an equivalent versioned or auditable artifact for documents, data or operations.
Why it matters
Coordinate through artifacts that can be inspected and versioned: pull requests, issues, decision records, test results or change sets. Let agents post work where humans and other agents can review it asynchronously. Keep the artifact self-contained enough that a reviewer does not need the originating chat to understand the change, rationale and checks.
An example
An agent opens a pull request with the diff, test evidence and remaining risk; a second agent or human reviews that artifact rather than joining the first agent's context.
Check your result
A new reviewer can take useful action from the shared artifact alone.
Keep this limit in mind
- Not every task belongs in Git; choose an equivalent versioned or auditable artifact for documents, data or operations.
Connected ideas
Useful withLet subagents write durable artifacts instead of relaying everything through the coordinator
Evidence and sources
AI Engineer harness guidance presents pull requests as an asynchronous shared interface where human and agent contributors can review and coordinate without sharing one live conversation.
This pattern fits version-controlled work; other domains may need a different shared artifact.
Harness Engineering: How to Build Software When Humans Steer, Agents Execute · GitHub pull requests as broadcast domain