The shared task list is the coordination primitive for Agent Teams. Teammates claim tasks, do them, and mark them complete - no direct dispatching required.

What it does

The lead writes tasks to the shared list. Teammates watch the list, claim ones that match their skills, and post updates as they progress. Claims prevent double work. Statuses (pending, claimed, in-progress, completed, failed) make the team's state legible at a glance. It's the simplest coordination pattern that handles real parallelism.

When to use it

Any Agent Team run - the shared list is always present.
Patterns where any teammate can do any task (fungible workers).
Visibility - a human can watch the list and understand progress.
Recovery - if a teammate stalls, another can re-claim.

Gotchas

Race conditions on claims are rare but possible. Watch for dual claims in logs.
Tasks with unspoken dependencies cause deadlock. Use explicit task dependencies.
Keep task descriptions actionable - vague tasks produce vague results.

Official docs: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-teams.md#assign-and-claim-tasks