How do you run several AI coding agents in parallel without conflicts?

There are two kinds of conflict. The obvious one is mechanical: two agents edit the same file, or one changes a dependency the other relies on, in the same directory. The subtler one is the one Cognition describes: each agent makes implicit decisions — naming, structure, error handling — and two reasonable sets of decisions can be incompatible when combined.

Git's own documentation describes worktrees as a way to check out more than one branch at a time, each in its own directory, sharing one repository. That gives every agent an isolated copy without cloning the repository repeatedly.

Adding a new API endpoint splits cleanly: one agent implements the handler and its tests, another writes the client call and UI, a third updates the documentation. If the request and response shape is agreed first and written into the repository, the three branches can be built in parallel and merged in order. If it is not, each agent invents its own shape and the merge is where the real work begins.

Parallel agents shorten wall-clock time on independent work but multiply token cost and review load: every branch still needs a person to read it. On tightly coupled changes, a single agent working sequentially with full context is often faster in practice, because nothing has to be reconciled at the end.