Parallel Pattern: Agents Working Simultaneously
~10 min read
Each agent tackles a different subtask at the same time, and their outputs merge into one result — reduces latency in high-throughput pipelines where subtasks don't depend on each other.
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Key points
- •Multiple agents tackle genuinely independent subtasks simultaneously, with outputs merged into one final result
- •Only makes sense when subtasks truly don't depend on each other's output — otherwise you're back to Sequential
- •Perfect for reducing latency in high-throughput pipelines like document parsing or API orchestration
- •Total wall-clock time drops to roughly the slowest individual agent's time, not the sum of all agents
- •Requires an explicit aggregation step, and genuine confidence the subtasks are truly independent — mistaken parallelization produces subtly wrong results