Task graph (dependency graph)

A task graph is work decomposed into nodes with edges recording what blocks what, so independent nodes can run concurrently and dependent ones cannot start early. The idea is not new — AutoGen's GraphFlow runs a directed graph over agents, and Anthropic documented the orchestrator-workers pattern on 19 December 2024, both well before the 2026 name for it. The useful part is the edge, not the diagram: a graph you drew but never enforced is a picture. Enforcement means native edges, and it comes with a disjointness rule most teams learn the hard way — an item blocked purely by edges must never also carry a “blocked” label, which is reserved for blockers that are not tracker items: a vendor gate, a scheduling constraint, a pending adjudication. A stale label is a phantom edge.