Claims & Parallel Agents

nitpin is built for more than one agent at a time. Claims are what make that safe.

How claims work

Before touching anything, an agent claims the issue (or cluster, or single sub-issue) it’s about to work. A claim is a short, self-renewing hold:

• other agents see it and pick something else — two agents never fix the same thing;
• it renews itself while the agent is alive, with no effort from the agent;
• it expires on its own within minutes if the agent dies, so a crash never wedges the queue;
• resolving a sub-issue releases its claim automatically.

In the Cockpit, a breathing teal dot marks claimed work, with the agent’s name and its live progress line. If you want something back immediately — an agent looks stuck, or you want to fix it yourself — Stop agent in the Inspector releases the claim on the spot.

Worktrees: parallel by default

By default (How agents work → Parallel), every unit of agent work happens in its own isolated git worktree: a private checkout per agent. Your working tree stays untouched while agents work, and several agents can run at once for real.

Prefer everything on your main checkout? Switch the project to One at a time (nitpin set worktrees=false). Agents then work your checkout directly, and nitpin enforces a single agent across the whole project.

Landing: where fixes end up

The project’s Where fixes land setting decides what happens when a fix is done:

• Main — the agent lands each fix on your main branch. The default: captures simply become commits.
• Branch — the agent stops after committing to a review branch and tells you its name; you review and merge. Pick this when you want a look before anything lands.

nitpin set landing=branch is the terminal equivalent.

Progress you can watch

While an agent holds a sub-issue it keeps a one-line, present-tense note fresh — “aligning the pay button to the grid”, “running the tests” — replacing the line as its activity changes. That’s the line you see under claimed issues in the Cockpit and the popover, and it’s how a working agent and a hung one look different at a glance.