agent-teams

name	agent-teams
description	Agent team protocols for workspace-hub — when to use teams, decision matrix, team lifecycle, communication patterns, and MAX_TEAMMATES=3 constraint
version	1.0.0
category	workspace-hub
author	workspace-hub
type	skill
last_updated	"2026-03-10T00:00:00.000Z"
wrk_ref	WRK-212
related_skills	["orchestrator-routing","improve","repo-sync"]
tags	["agent-teams","orchestration","protocols","coordination","parallel-agents"]
platforms	["all"]
capabilities	[]
requires	[]

Agent Teams

Sub-Skills

• Core Constraint
• Workspace Work Profile (Updated 2026-03-10)
• Activation
• Decision Matrix: Team vs Sequential
• 1. Create team (+5)
• DM (default — always prefer) (+2)
• Agent Types for Common Tasks
• Work Queue Integration
• Subagent startup convention (+2)
• Idle State
• Related

Iron Law

No task shall spawn more than 3 concurrent subagents (MAX_TEAMMATES=3) — no matter how parallelizable the work appears.

Rationalization Defense

Excuse	Reality
"This task has 5 independent parts — 5 agents would be faster"	More agents means more coordination overhead, more context conflicts, and more merge failures. The limit is empirically derived.
"I'll just use 4 this one time"	The limit exists because every team that exceeded 3 hit coordination failures. There is no safe "just one more."
"These agents don't need to coordinate"	Even "independent" agents contend for git locks, file writes, and context. Zero-coordination is a myth in a shared repo.

Red Flags

These phrases signal you are about to violate the Iron Law:

• "we could parallelize this into N agents" (where N > 3)
• "one more agent won't hurt"
• "these are fully independent — no coordination needed"
• "the limit is conservative for this case"