Run agents in parallel

Compare the ways Claude Code can take on multiple tasks at once: subagents, agent view, agent teams, and isolated worktree sessions.

Subagents, agent view, agent teams, and worktrees each parallelize work in a different way. The right one depends on whether you want to stay in each conversation yourself, hand tasks off and check back later, or have Claude coordinate a group of workers for you.

Approach	What it gives you	Use it when
Subagents	Delegated workers inside one session that do a side task in their own context and return a summary	A side task would flood your main conversation with search results, logs, or file contents you won’t reference again
Agent view	One screen to dispatch and monitor sessions running in the background, opened with claude agents. Research preview	You have several independent tasks and want to hand them off, check status at a glance, and step in only when one needs you
Agent teams	Multiple coordinated sessions with a shared task list and inter-agent messaging, managed by a lead. Experimental and disabled by default	You want Claude to split a project into pieces, assign them, and keep the workers in sync
Worktrees	Separate git checkouts so parallel sessions never touch each other’s files	You’re running several sessions yourself, or your subagents edit overlapping files
/batch	A planned split of one large change into 5 to 30 worktree-isolated subagents that each open a pull request	A repo-wide migration or mechanical refactor you can describe in one instruction

In every approach the workers are Claude sessions. To involve a different tool, expose it to Claude as an MCP server.

You can combine these approaches. Agent view automatically moves each dispatched session into its own worktree when it needs to edit files, and a session you’re working in can spawn subagents that each get their own worktree.

Running several sessions or subagents at once multiplies token usage. See Costs for usage and rate-limit details.

Choose an approach

The right approach depends on who coordinates the work, whether the workers need to communicate, and whether they edit the same files:

• Who coordinates the work? If you want Claude to delegate and collect results inside one conversation, use subagents. If you’re handing off independent tasks and checking back on them, use agent view. If you want Claude to plan, assign, and supervise a group of workers, use agent teams, which are experimental and disabled by default.
• Do the workers need to talk to each other? Subagents report results back to the conversation that spawned them, and agent view sessions report only to you. Teammates in an agent team share a task list and message each other directly.
• Do the tasks touch the same files? Isolate the work with worktrees. Subagents and sessions you run yourself can each use a separate worktree. Agent teams don’t isolate teammates in worktrees, so partition the work so each teammate owns a different set of files.

Check on running work

The command for checking on running work depends on which approach you used:

• For background sessions, claude agents opens agent view: one screen showing every session, its state, and which ones need your input.
• For subagents in the current session, /agents opens a panel with a Running tab listing live subagents and a Library tab where you create and edit custom subagents. Despite the similar name, this is separate from claude agents.
• For anything running in the background of the current session, /tasks lists each item and lets you check on, attach to, or stop it.

For a desktop view of all your sessions, see parallel sessions in the desktop app.

Learn more

Each guide below covers setup and configuration for one approach:

• Create custom subagents: define reusable specialists and control which tools they can use.
• Manage agents with agent view: dispatch sessions, watch their state, and attach when one needs you.
• Orchestrate agent teams: set up a lead and teammates, assign tasks, and review their work.
• Run parallel sessions with worktrees: start Claude in an isolated checkout, control what gets copied in, and clean up afterward.