Orchestrating Claude Code Agents: The Chief of Staff Pattern

The "Chief of Staff Pattern" addresses the limitations of AI coding agents, specifically their ephemeral context and unreliable self-reports. This organizational solution, also known as orchestrator-worker or coordinator-implementor-verifier, involves a coordinating session that manages and verifies tasks, while separate sessions execute them. A durable external board maintains state, and every claim is re-run for verification. The process includes steps like PULL, READ, RED GATE, DELEGATE, PROVE, OBSERVE, GATE, and SHIP, designed to catch common failure modes such as vacuous assertions, silent no-matches, and stale premises.