Parallel issues

The whole point of AO is running agents in parallel. Each session gets its own git worktree, so agents can't stomp each other's branches.

Batch spawn

ao batch-spawn takes one or more issue identifiers:

ao batch-spawn 42 43 44

AO:

Skips any issue that already has an active session
De-duplicates within the batch
Creates a worktree per agent
Reports a summary when all are spawned

For a quick interactive version, just run ao spawn a few times — batch-spawn adds the duplicate detection.

One agent, many issues? No.

Each spawn is one agent working on exactly one issue. If you want the same issue worked on by two different agents (e.g. Claude Code and Codex) in parallel, pass --agent:

ao spawn 42 --agent claude-code
ao spawn 42 --agent codex

AO creates two distinct sessions. Compare the PRs side by side.

Isolation guarantees

What's isolated	How
File edits	Each session has its own worktree under `~/.worktrees/{projectId}/{sessionId}/`. Session metadata lives under `~/.agent-orchestrator/{hash}-{projectId}/sessions/{sessionId}` — the worktree itself is in `~/.worktrees/`.
Branch name	AO names the branch after the session ID, avoiding collisions
Agent state	Each agent's native session files (Claude JSONL, Codex session, etc.) are session-scoped
Terminal	Each session owns its own tmux window (or child process)

What isn't isolated

Your project's node_modules. Workspaces clone/share the repo; if your agent runs npm install it updates the worktree's node_modules, which is fine. If your agent runs pnpm install with a shared store, the store is shared.
External side effects. If an agent opens a PR, triggers CI, or posts to a notifier, those effects are visible to you and everyone else immediately.

Watching them move

On the dashboard, each card shows:

Issue title + number
Current lifecycle state (spawning → working → pr_open → ci_failed / review_pending / mergeable / merged)
Activity (active, ready, idle, waiting_input, blocked)
Cost (agent-reported when available)

The Kanban columns update as state changes — you don't need to reload.

From the CLI

# List everything at a glance
ao status

# Keep it on-screen
ao status --watch

# Filter to one project
ao status -p my-repo --json

When you want fewer

ao session kill <sessionId> — kill one
ao session cleanup — kill everything whose PR merged or issue closed (safe; archives metadata)
ao session cleanup --dry-run — preview first

Need them all gone? ao stop --all halts every running AO instance on this machine.