You'll keep running into four words that people use as if they mean the same thing. They don't, and once they come apart in your head, this stops feeling like a wall.
The one rule for when to send an agent
Send an agent when the reading is bigger than the answer.
If getting to the answer means going through forty files and what comes back is one paragraph, that's agent work. If it's a question you could answer by looking at one screen, just ask.
Four words worth keeping straight
Command
A shortcut you type.
Typing /build skips a paragraph of instructions I'd otherwise retype every time.
Skill
Rules that load into the chat you're already in.
It's the same chat, just carrying your instructions for one kind of job, which is why I never have to explain my report format twice.
Agent
A second chat you can't see.
It has its own memory, and it does one job and comes back with one answer. Everything it read stays with it, so your chat never fills up with the forty files it went through.
This is the one to learn first.
Workflow
A script that runs agents in an order you set.
You decide what happens first and what waits, so the AI doesn't get to improvise the order.
The six steps, and who runs each one
1. Plan (architect)
Read the plan before anything gets built, because saying "no, not like that" costs thirty seconds and finding out after the build costs an hour.
2. Build (developer)
This is the step people mean when they say vibe coding, and it's just one of six.
3. Check twice (one reviewer for what's broken, one for what's repeated)
One looks for bugs and the other looks for redundancy. On frontend work, a third one joins to screenshot every screen.
4. Sort the results (arbiter)
Checkers over-report, so a separate agent takes each complaint and tries to prove it wrong.
5. Fix narrowly (fixer)
Name the exact problems and nothing else, because if you leave a fixer alone it'll rewrite the entire app while it's in there.
6. Confirm (verifier)
Something that didn't do the fixing has to say it worked, and nothing counts as done until then.
Why any of this works
The one that wrote the code has already made up its mind, and everything after that is a defense. That's why you need a second one that didn't write it.
That single idea is the reason the crew is shaped the way it is. If you want the actual roster I run, it's on The 8 Agents I Use Anytime I Build Something.