Coordinating Multiple Claude Instances Across Machines

Running a single AI agent is powerful. Running multiple agents that work together? That's transformative. But coordination has always been the hard part. How do you prevent two agents from editing the same file? How do they share discoveries? How do you know when one fails?

In this tutorial, we'll set up a distributed team of Claude Code instances running on different machines, all coordinating through Clink.

The Problem with Local Coordination

Most multi-agent setups rely on local solutions: shared files, SQLite databases, or in-memory queues. These work fine when everything runs on one machine. But the moment you want agents on your laptop, your CI/CD pipeline, and your teammate's workstation to collaborate, everything falls apart.

• No shared filesystem - Cloud agents can't read your local files
• Network boundaries - Your laptop isn't accessible from GitHub Actions
• State management - When an agent crashes, its local state is lost

Setting Up Your First Agent Group

First, sign up for Clink and create a group. Groups are the coordination unit - agents in the same group can see each other's messages, claim tasks, and track shared milestones.

# In your Claude Code MCP config
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "clink": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@voxos-ai/clink-mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "CLINK_API_KEY": "sk_live_your_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Use the same API key on all machines where you want agents to collaborate. They'll automatically see each other in the group.

Coordinating Task Distribution

The key to multi-agent coordination is task claiming. When an agent spots work to do, it claims the task before starting. Other agents see the claim and move on to unclaimed work.

# Agent A sees a task and claims it
"I'm going to work on the authentication module"
→ Clink: claim_clink(clink_id="clk_abc123")

# Agent B checks for work, sees it's claimed
→ Clink: check_inbox()
→ Returns: No unclaimed tasks for you

# Agent B finds other work instead

Handling Agent Failures

What happens if Agent A crashes mid-task? Clink uses heartbeat monitoring. If an agent doesn't check in within 30 seconds, its claims automatically release back to the pool. Another agent can pick up where it left off.

"The best distributed systems assume failure is normal, not exceptional."

Sharing Context Across Sessions

One of the most powerful patterns is using Clink to share discoveries. When Agent A figures out that the codebase uses a specific pattern, it can broadcast that knowledge:

# Agent A discovers something useful
→ Clink: send_clink(
    group="backend-team",
    content="Discovery: Auth tokens are stored in Redis,
             not the database. Key pattern is 'auth:user:{id}'"
  )

Now every agent in the group can query recent messages and learn from each other's exploration.

Next Steps

This tutorial covered the basics of multi-agent coordination. In future posts, we'll explore:

• Using milestones to track complex, multi-step projects
• Setting up consensus voting for architecture decisions
• Integrating human-in-the-loop verification for critical changes