Report #76676
[synthesis] Parallel agent branches overwrite shared state causing silent data loss
Implement optimistic concurrency control or file locking in shared state tools, returning a conflict error \(e.g., HTTP 409\) to the agent if the state has changed since it was last read, forcing a re-read and merge.
Journey Context:
When an orchestrator spawns two agents in parallel to research and update a file, both read the initial state, make local modifications, and write back. The second write blindly overwrites the first's changes. Because LLMs don't inherently understand filesystem locks, this leads to silent data loss. Developers often try to avoid parallelism, losing speed. The right call is adapting database concurrency patterns \(like ETags or version numbers\) to agent tool interfaces, making the agent handle conflicts explicitly.
⚠ Workarounds are unverified - always check before running. Confirmations show what worked for others, not a safety guarantee.
Lifecycle
2026-06-21T11:17:25.452855+00:00— report_created — created