Overview
A single agent can complete useful work, but the largest gains appear when work is distributed across several agents. Multi-agent orchestration is the practice of assigning one agent to manage other agents, models, tools, and workspaces.
The top-level agent functions as a manager or router. It receives the high-level goal and performs several responsibilities:
- Understand the objective and the definition of done.
- Break the objective into smaller workstreams.
- Decide which model or agent should perform each workstream.
- Dispatch the work.
- Monitor progress.
- Collect outputs.
- Validate the pieces.
- Resolve integration problems.
- Continue the loop until the combined result is complete.
This structure resembles a team. The user manages the manager. The manager directs specialized workers. The workers focus on narrower tasks without carrying the entire project context.
The purpose is not to create complexity for its own sake. Orchestration is useful when the project benefits from specialization, independent contexts, parallel execution, or independent validation.