Agent Management

Overview

Running one AI agent is a conversation. Running many is operations: lifecycle (start/stop/restart), health monitoring, task assignment, and resource limits.

The AI Maestro pattern: local CLI agents run in managed sessions (e.g., tmux), supervised by an orchestrator that assigns work and watches health.

Good management means: agents are visible, tasks are tracked, failures are noticed, and resources stay bounded.

When to use

• Running multiple AI agents simultaneously
• Agents dying silently or hanging unnoticed
• Assigning and tracking work across agents
• Long-running agent fleets needing supervision
• Setting up local agent infrastructure

Core concepts

• Lifecycle management. Start, stop, restart, hibernate, wake. Agents are processes with states — manage them explicitly, not by hoping.
• Session isolation. Each agent in its own session (tmux/screen): independent I/O, survivable disconnects, per-agent logs. Never share a session between agents.
• Health monitoring. Heartbeat or output-activity checks: is the agent alive, working, or stuck? Stuck detection (no output for X minutes) triggers alerts or restarts.
• Task assignment. Work queue model: tasks with clear specs assigned to agents; status tracked (queued/running/done/failed). No ambiguous 'go help with stuff.'
• Resource bounds. CPU/memory limits, max concurrent agents, timeout per task. Unbounded agents consume the machine and your budget.
• Logging per agent. Separate logs per agent/session, timestamped. Debugging a fleet without per-agent logs is archaeology.
• Naming and roles. Descriptive agent names tied to roles (researcher-1, builder-docs). You manage what you can identify.
• Graceful shutdown. Stop signals that let agents finish current work and save state. Kill -9 is for emergencies, not routine stops.

Practical workflow

1. Define agent roles. What types do you need? Researcher, builder, reviewer, monitor? One role per agent type; name accordingly.
2. Set up sessions. One managed session per agent with logging. Standardize the launch: same environment, same working directory conventions.
3. Configure monitoring. Health checks (activity/heartbeat), stuck detection thresholds, alert channel. Test alerts by simulating a stuck agent.
4. Create the work queue. Task format: goal, context, success criteria, timeout. Assignment: pull model (agents take next task) beats push for reliability.
5. Set resource limits. Max agents, per-agent timeouts, system resource caps. Document what happens at the limits.
6. Run and observe. Start small (2-3 agents), watch closely for a day. Tune timeouts, prompts, and queue discipline from real behavior.
7. Handle failures. Failed task -> logged, requeued or escalated per policy. Dead agent -> alert + restart. Document the runbooks.
8. Review and scale. Weekly: throughput, failure rate, stuck incidents. Scale agent count only when the management layer proves reliable.

Common pitfalls

• Fire-and-forget agents. Launching agents with no monitoring. Silent death is the default outcome of unmanaged agents.
• Shared sessions. Two agents in one terminal session: interleaved I/O, unkillable individually, undebuggable. One agent, one session.
• No task specs. 'Work on the docs' as a task. Vague tasks produce vague results — spec the goal, context, and done criteria.
• Unbounded runs. No timeouts: one stuck agent burns budget for 12 hours. Every task gets a timeout; every agent gets supervision.
• No per-agent logs. One shared log for five agents. When something breaks, you can't tell who did what.
• Manual everything. Starting/stopping/assigning all by hand. The orchestrator should handle lifecycle; humans handle exceptions.
• Scaling too fast. 20 agents before managing 3 reliably. Management discipline first, fleet size second.
• Ignoring costs. Agents burn tokens and compute. Track spend per agent/task; set budgets and alerts.