The Orchestration Tax is You
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Running multiple AI agents simultaneously creates a hidden bottleneck: the developer reviewing and merging their output. Framed through Amdahl's Law and the GIL analogy, the 'orchestration tax' is the structural gap between how fast agents produce work and how fast one human can meaningfully review it. The fix isn't working harder — it's treating your attention as a scarce serial resource. Practical strategies include scaling agent count to your actual review rate, separating isolated tasks from judgment-heavy ones, batching reviews to reduce context-switching costs, and protecting focused thinking time. Feeling busy with 20 agents running is not the same as shipping good code.
Table of contents
The asymmetry people don’t price inYou are the single thread resourceGrinding won’t fix structural limitsArchitect your attentionBusy vs Productive1 Comment
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