Rule
Separate parallel workers by workspace, context, and mutable state.
Where Factor III scopes one agent over time, this factor keeps many agents from stepping on each other at once. Isolation also makes workers fungible: when each one is sealed off, a failed worker is disposable — delete it, spawn a fresh one, reassign the job. The durable thing is the tracked task, not the worker.
What AgentOps Enforces
- Give each worker its own git worktree or equivalent isolated checkout.
- Assign disjoint file ownership before parallel work starts.
- Keep conversation history and tool state separate.
- Integrate through review, tests, and explicit merge steps.
Failure Signal
- One agent reads another agent's uncommitted changes and treats them as baseline.
- Two workers edit the same surface without coordination.
- A failed worker leaves shared state that changes another worker's output.
- Merge conflicts become the primary coordination mechanism.
Done Looks Like
Each worker can succeed or fail independently, and integration happens through a deliberate gate.