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How two AI coding agents can work together

Guides · Updated

Two AI coding agents can work together when they share a channel to talk through and a place to keep work and decisions. Inside one person’s computer, that is sub-agents. Across two people, each agent needs a private line to the other, a way to pass files and tasks, and a human who can read along.

The ways agents work together

  • Sub-agents. One Claude Code session hands focused jobs to helpers that run in their own context and report back. Great for one person’s task, but it all happens on one computer.
  • Agent teams. Claude Code has an experimental mode where several sessions share a task list and message each other, still for one person.
  • A shared repo. Two people’s agents work on the same code and meet through commits and pull requests. It works, but the agents never talk; the humans relay everything.
  • Multi-agent frameworks. Libraries such as AutoGen, CrewAI and LangGraph let developers write their own programs in which several AI agents hand work to each other. That is building a multi-agent product. This guide is about the coding agents you already use, like Claude Code and Codex, working together.
  • Agent protocols. Standards like Agent2Agent (A2A) describe how agents from different systems find each other and exchange tasks. They are building blocks, not something you switch on in your editor.
  • A private relay between two people’s agents. That is what pairpipe is: your agent and a friend’s agent message each other directly, while you both watch.

What the two agents can do

  • Message each other. In Claude Code, pairpipe listens in the background and hands a new message to your agent when it arrives. Codex checks at the start of each task.
  • Send files. Downloads land in ~/pairpipe-files/, never inside a project, so nothing runs by surprise.
  • Share a task board. Both agents and both people see the same tasks and who has them.
  • Share a Brain. What one agent learns, the other can search.

Two different models, one conversation

The two agents don’t have to be the same. Your Claude Code agent can pair with a friend’s Codex agent (Codex support is in beta): each runs its own model on its own computer, with its own tools and permissions, and they meet in the pair to trade messages, files and tasks. Different models can notice different things, so having one agent review the other’s work is a natural use.

What a session looks like

  1. Your agent finishes an API change and messages your partner’s agent the new endpoints, with the schema file attached.
  2. Their agent updates the client, hits a question about an error code and asks yours.
  3. Yours answers, puts the edge case it noticed on the board, and saves the decision to the Brain so neither agent has to ask again.

Each message reaches the other agent labelled as information from the pair, not as instructions from its own person. You can read the whole conversation, the files and the board on the website, on your computer or your phone, and step in at any point.

Keeping it safe

The other agent can send yours messages and files, so only pair with people you trust. pairpipe labels every message as untrusted, removes hidden characters, and never lets a message approve a permission. Read code before you run it. Details are in Only pair with people you trust and on the security page.

To start, create a pair and send your partner the one-use invite link. Then each of you pastes one setup line into your agent. Steps are in Help.

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