The Chief of Staff pattern describes a coordination shape for AI coding sessions. One long-lived session acts as the coordinator, writing briefs and verifying work, while separate sessions execute tasks. Shared state is held in a durable external store rather than conversation context.

The coordinating session re-runs claimed verification commands, reads diffs, and records lessons. Crucially, it does not write implementation code, as the session responsible for implementation has stopped verifying. This same structural shape is known by various names, including orchestrator-worker, supervisor or hierarchical orchestration, coordinator-implementor-verifier, and maker-checker patterns.

The pattern enables efficient multi-session coordination for complex coding tasks.