Parallel Branches & Merge Patterns

Not every pipeline is linear. A proposal pipeline might branch: one branch researches the client's industry while another branch researches the client's competitors while a third branch pulls the client's public financial data. These three branches run in parallel and then merge into a single context document that feeds the drafting stage. Parallel branches cut elapsed time — three 20-minute research tasks complete in 20 minutes instead of 60.

The merge step is the hard part. Three branches produce three artifacts with different structures, different levels of detail, and potentially conflicting data. The merge prompt must specify: which artifact takes priority when data conflicts, how to handle gaps in one branch that are covered by another, and what the merged output format looks like. A sloppy merge produces a Frankenstein document with inconsistent tone, duplicated data, and structural incoherence.