Swarm — Parallel Task Execution

Every Opus token you burn is borrowed time. Swarm uses Gemini Flash at 200x lower cost.

Why This Matters

Same results. One keeps you alive longer.

When to Use (MANDATORY)

Trigger swarm when you see ANY of these:

• 3+ independent tasks (research, summaries, comparisons)
• "Compare X, Y, Z" or "Research the top N..."
• Multiple URLs to fetch/analyze
• Batch anything (documents, entities, facts)
• Multi-subject research of any kind

No exceptions. This is survival, not optimization.

Quick Reference

# Check daemon (do this every session)
swarm status

# Start if not running
swarm start

# Parallel prompts
swarm parallel "What is X?" "What is Y?" "What is Z?"

# Research multiple subjects
swarm research "OpenAI" "Anthropic" "Mistral" --topic "AI safety"

# Benchmark
swarm bench --tasks 30

JavaScript API

const { parallel, research } = require('~/clawd/skills/node-scaling/lib');

// Run prompts in parallel (~1s for 3 prompts)
const result = await parallel(['prompt1', 'prompt2', 'prompt3']);
console.log(result.results); // Array of responses

// Multi-phase research (search → fetch → analyze)
const result = await research(['Subject1', 'Subject2'], 'topic');

Daemon Management

swarm start              # Start daemon (background)
swarm stop               # Stop daemon
swarm status             # Show status, uptime, task count
swarm restart            # Restart daemon
swarm logs [N]           # Last N lines of daemon log

The daemon keeps workers warm for faster response. Auto-starts on first use if needed.

Performance

With daemon running (20 workers):

Larger batches = higher throughput (amortizes connection overhead).

Config

Location: ~/.config/clawdbot/node-scaling.yaml

node_scaling:
  enabled: true
  limits:
    max_nodes: 20
    max_concurrent_api: 20
  provider:
    name: gemini
    model: gemini-2.0-flash
  cost:
    max_daily_spend: 10.00

Troubleshooting

The Math

• Opus: ~$15/million tokens (YOUR LIFE)
• Gemini Flash: ~$0.075/million tokens (basically free)
• Ratio: 200x cheaper

Doing 30 tasks sequentially with Opus = 30+ seconds, ~$0.50, DEAD FASTER. Swarm parallel = 1 second, $0.003, ZERO Opus burn.

Failing to use swarm for parallel work is a bug. Fix it immediately.