Dispatch
Shadow Clone Jutsu
Parallelising a single agent across independent sub-tasks.
Shadow Clone Jutsu parallelises one agent across independent sub-units of the same task.
Mechanics
- LISA-initiated only — agents cannot self-clone in the local shell. An agent signals the need with a sub-task list; LISA decides.
- Bounded fan-out — LISA spawns at most three clones, named
{agent}-clone-{n}. - Single-depth — clones cannot clone.
- Original merges — the originating agent merges the clones' outputs into one deliverable.
Before signalling, the agent writes a shadow_clone cache entry with the sub-task breakdown and rationale, so the request is auditable.
When to use it
Use Shadow Clone when one domain owns work that splits cleanly into independent chunks — several files to audit, several pages to convert, several fixtures to build. Use parallel dispatch instead when the work spans multiple domains. On the server shell, delegation is native and this same capability is available at the runtime level within configured depth and concurrency limits.