Which Fleet Pattern When?

Pick one primary pattern per organizational pain. Overlapping patterns need coordination — see multi-fleet.md.

flowchart TD
    A[What hurts?] --> B{Don't know what agents exist?}
    B -->|yes| C[Team Agent Registry]
    B -->|no| D{Risky actions without approval?}
    D -->|yes| E[Shared Inbox HITL]
    D -->|no| F{Too many manager/worker handoffs failing?}
    F -->|yes| G[Hierarchical Delegation]
    F -->|no| H{One good agent, many teams want it?}
    H -->|yes| I[Agent Clone & Fork]
    H -->|no| J{Token bill surprise?}
    J -->|yes| K[Fleet Budget Guard]
    J -->|no| L{Compliance / incident review?}
    L -->|yes| M[Cross-Agent Audit]
    L -->|no| C

Quick reference

Symptom	Pattern	Start with
"We have agents everywhere"	Team Agent Registry	F1 catalog only
Agents act without oversight	Shared Inbox HITL	F1 approve-only
Manager loop loses track of workers	Hierarchical Delegation	F1 typed handoffs
One agent should serve many teams	Agent Clone & Fork	F1 clone policy
Spend growing silently	Fleet Budget Guard	F1 caps only
"Who did this?" in incident	Cross-Agent Audit	F1 read-only audit

Recommended first week (most teams)

1. Team Agent Registry — inventory what exists
2. Fleet Budget Guard — caps before scale
3. Shared Inbox HITL — before any L2+ loops go unattended

Overlap rules

Combination	Rule
Registry + anything	Registry first; no new agents without manifest
Budget Guard + Hierarchical Delegation	Manager loop inherits team budget; workers inherit sub-caps
Clone & Fork + Registry	Clones must register as new IDs with forked_from
Audit + Inbox	Inbox approvals are audit events — link IDs

Prerequisite

If you do not yet have stable loops, start with loop-engineering first. Fleet patterns assume at least one loop pattern is understood.