Pointing several AI agents at a job in parallel is powerful — and the fastest way to burn through a metered plan. Here's the rule for when it pays off, and when it just costs you.
Building one sim is a one-agent job — always. A swarm can't build a single HTML file faster: there's only one file, so the agents collide, duplicate work, and you pay N times for one result. One agent, one file.
Stop at the first rung that works.
If the pieces depend on each other, it's not a swarm job — it's rung 2.
Not building — gathering.
"Research 8 topics students struggle with and rank them" — 8 agents, one topic each.
"Check these 20 sims for the same bug" — one agent per file.
"Search for open-source examples across these sources" — one agent per source.
Could you hand each agent its slice on a separate sticky note and never have them talk? If yes → swarm. If no → one agent.
Parallel research agents confidently invent citations, stats, and "facts" — a real, measured failure mode. Never trust swarm research output as-is. Spot-check the load-bearing claims against a primary source first. One fabricated "students struggle with X" sends you building the wrong sim.