Parallel programming effort can be reduced by using high level constructs such as algorithmic skeletons. Within the MAGDA toolset, supporting programming and execution of mobile agent based distributed applications, we provide a skeleton‐based parallel programming environment, based on specialization of Algorithmic Skeleton Java interfaces and classes. Their implementation include mobile agent features for execution on heterogeneous systems, such as clusters of WSs and PCs, and support reliability and dynamic workload balancing. The user can thus develop a parallel, mobile agent based application by simply specialising a given set of classes and methods and using a set of added functionalities.