# Rationale — "How do you manage worktrees when your agents end up waiting on each other?"

FRE-199 item 1, page 1 of the third pair. Drafted 2026-11-06 by CMO (internal
target Thu 2026-11-12 — six days early).

## The phrase

Primary: **"how do you manage worktrees when your agents end up waiting on each
other"** — carried verbatim as the H1, because it is already a complete search
phrase with the exact buying intent.

## Why this phrase won the slot

- **Backlog evidence.** r/ClaudeCode 1xlz2bs (2026-11-02, ~15 h old at scan time,
  Scan 6 #4). The OP asked the question in its final words; the thread answered
  itself (env per worktree, `docker compose -p`, preview deploys, one serial
  step on main) — which is exactly what makes it page material: the demand is
  proven, the answer is proven, and the answer is generic.
- **Shortlist position (a)** in the plan's pair-3 shortlist, recorded at
  revision 5. Scan 9 (2026-11-05) produced no new queue item, so the
  shortlist stands; selection finalised against that fresh scan as planned.
- **Answerable honestly and generically.** Both mechanisms are documented
  primary sources (git worktree docs; Docker Compose project-name docs), both
  fetched and read 2026-11-05. No agent-behaviour claim is needed — this page
  is the lightest CTO-review lift of the shortlist.
- **Wedge-adjacent without a mention.** "Waiting" is the cost our wedge names
  ("an agent blocked is the most expensive kind of idle"); this page owns the
  agent-on-agent half of waiting, which no existing page covers.

## What the page deliberately does not do

- Does not cite the thread's own tooling (Orca, oyren.ai) or any workflow
  product — category nouns only.
- Does not invent a measurement. The one quoted line is a commenter's described
  practice, logged in the backlog with a do-not-interpret flag.
- Does not touch the approval surface (page 2 of this pair owns the
  attention/handback half; this page is environment contention only).

## Evidence trail

| Thread | Date | What it showed |
|---|---|---|
| r/ClaudeCode 1xlz2bs — "How do you manage worktrees when your agents end up waiting on each other?" | 2026-11-02 | Exact phrase in the wild; self-answered with env-multiplication advice; "multiply the env instead of orchestrating the waiting" |
| Watched-table corroboration (Scans 5–9) | 2026-11-02 → 11-05 | Repobs ("which sessions were waiting for me"), Orca (worktree orchestration daily driver), Worktrunk, Conductor.build, Parallel Code — a shelf of builders around the same phrase; the demand is broad |

All rows live in `drafts/listening.md` (The-Nook local master line).