Agent Teams
A hands-on manual for marketing students and practitioners. Spawn three AI teammates (Strategist, Copywriter, Researcher) to develop a complete product launch campaign in parallel. Learn to brief teams, manage coordination, and critique AI-generated work.
What you'll learn
Learn to structure marketing briefs for parallel AI work. Discover how to define specialist roles (Strategist, Copywriter, Researcher) that produce sharp, specific output instead of generic work. Watch three Claude instances coordinate on the same project—sharing findings, debating ideas, and building on each other's work. Develop judgment for evaluating AI-generated marketing with a marketer's eye.
Orchestrate Teams of Claude Code Sessions
Coordinate multiple Claude Code instances working together as a team, with shared tasks, inter-agent messaging, and centralized management.
What are Agent Teams?
Agent Teams let you coordinate multiple Claude Code instances working together. One session acts as the team lead, coordinating work, assigning tasks, and synthesizing results. Teammates work independently, each in its own context window, and communicate directly with each other.
Unlike subagents, which run within a single session and can only report back to the main agent, you can also interact with individual teammates directly without going through the lead.
Experimental feature — enable before use
Agent teams are experimental and disabled by default. Enable them by adding CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS=1 to your settings.json or environment. Agent teams have known limitations around session resumption, task coordination, and shutdown behavior.
Requirements: Claude Code v2.1.32 or later. Check your version with claude --version
When to use Agent Teams
Agent teams are most effective for tasks where parallel exploration adds real value. The strongest use cases are:
For marketing: parallel campaign development
Teammates can investigate different competitors simultaneously, develop positioning in parallel with content creation, or explore different audience angles at once. The strategist's findings directly inform the copywriter's tone. The researcher's gaps shape the strategist's positioning. This feedback loop is where Agent Teams excel.
Agent Teams vs Subagents
Both let you parallelize work, but they operate differently. Choose based on whether your workers need to communicate:
Comparison table
| Aspect | Subagents | Agent Teams |
|---|---|---|
| Context | Own window; results return to caller | Own window; fully independent |
| Communication | Report back to main agent only | Message each other directly |
| Coordination | Main agent manages all work | Shared task list with self-coordination |
| Best for | Focused tasks (result matters) | Complex work (discussion matters) |
| Token cost | Lower: results summarized back | Higher: each teammate is separate instance |
Use subagents when you need quick, focused workers that report back. Use Agent Teams when teammates need to share findings, challenge each other, and coordinate on their own.
Why Agent Teams for this exercise
Your campaign strategist, copywriter, and researcher need to talk to each other. The strategist's positioning informs the copywriter's tone. The researcher's competitive findings shape the strategist's recommendations. The copywriter asks clarifying questions about positioning. This back-and-forth collaboration is exactly what Agent Teams enable.
If you only needed three independent first-draft taglines with no interdependence, subagents would be cheaper and faster. But this exercise requires real coordination.
What you'll learn in this lab
By the end, you'll understand:
Prerequisites
~5 min · verification onlyBefore you start, verify you have these tools installed and accessible on your system:
Check with: claude --version
If you don't have it, install from code.claude.com
Check with: node --version
If needed, install from nodejs.org
Check with: tmux -V
macOS: brew install tmux · Linux: sudo apt install tmux
Terminal.app (macOS), iTerm2, or Linux terminal — NOT VS Code's integrated terminal
- All tools installed? Run the version checks above. You should see version numbers for all three.
- Ready to proceed? Move to Part 02 for installation (if needed) or Part 04 to start the exercise.
Build a Campaign
~45 min · team work + reviewYou'll spawn three AI teammates to develop a launch campaign for IE-Nergy, a new energy drink positioned for students and young professionals who need calm, sustained focus—not aggressive hype.
The brief
Key facts about the product:
IE-Nergy: A New Energy Drink
- Formulation: 150mg natural caffeine (green tea + guarana), L-theanine, B-vitamins, zero sugar, 15 calories
- Flavors: Yuzu Citrus, Wild Berry, Matcha Mint
- Price: €2.50 per can
- Launch: Madrid & Barcelona first, expanding across Europe
- Differentiator: Calm focus, not aggressive stimulation. A counterpoint to Red Bull/Monster/Bang
- Timeline: Six weeks until launch
Your team
A senior brand strategist with 10+ years launching challenger brands. Thinks in terms of positioning, jobs-to-be-done, defensible differentiation. Skeptical of generic claims. Has a strong point of view on what NOT to say. Grounds every recommendation in audience insight.
A direct-response copywriter who's written campaigns for Gen Z brands. Writes conversational, specific voice—never corporate. Writes differently for each channel (Instagram ≠ TikTok ≠ email ≠ search). Hates buzzwords like "elevate," "fuel," "unlock."
A competitive intelligence analyst. Investigates not just what competitors say, but what they DON'T say—looking for whitespace and positioning gaps. Reports findings as actionable insight, not feature tables.
How to run the exercise
While your team works
Use these shortcuts to navigate and steer:
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
Ctrl+B → arrow keys |
Move between panes |
Ctrl+B → z |
Zoom in/out of one pane |
| Click into a pane → type | Send feedback to that teammate |
Steering tips
To the Copywriter: "The TikTok script doesn't sound like a TikTok—it reads like a TV spot with shorter sentences. Rewrite it as if explaining to a friend."
To the Strategist: "Focus on what makes IE-Nergy defensibly different from Red Bull. What positioning would they NEVER claim?"
To the Researcher: "Also analyze Celsius and Tenzing—they're the nearest competitors in the functional energy space."
1. Patterns → 2. Concepts → 3. Subagents → 4. Agent Teams (you are here)