Orchestrating Claude Code Agents: The Chief of Staff Pattern

The "Chief of Staff" pattern separates AI agent orchestration from execution by designating one long-lived coordinating session to assign tasks, verify claims, and maintain state in a durable external store, while separate worker sessions handle implementation. This approach solves the core problem of long-horizon AI coding work: unreliable context and self-reports that degrade over time, preventing agents from compounding lessons learned across sessions. The pattern treats agent claims as evidence requiring verification rather than instructions, storing state externally rather than in ephemeral conversation context.