Orchestration
Designing Agent Flows That Stay on Track
Orchestration is the choreography of intent, tools, and feedback. It makes sure every agent knows when to act and when to defer.
Core orchestration patterns
- Hub-and-spoke: a lead agent delegates to specialists.
- Pipeline: agents hand off outputs in a defined sequence.
- Swarm: multiple agents explore options in parallel, then converge.
- Human-in-the-loop: key checkpoints require human approval.
Tooling considerations
Assign tools by capability. Keep access scoped, log every action, and define rollback paths when automated steps go off course.
Orchestration that keeps humans in control
Orchestration is less about speed and more about predictability. Start by defining the human checkpoints that matter most: approvals, risk reviews, and final sign-off. Then position agents to gather context and propose options before those checkpoints. This gives humans a higher-quality decision surface without overwhelming them with raw output.
When designing flows, keep each handoff explicit. Every transfer should include a goal summary, artifacts produced, known constraints, and a clear “definition of done.” This keeps agent autonomy inside guardrails and ensures downstream agents know whether to proceed or pause.
Scale orchestration by limiting parallelism. Multiple agents exploring in parallel can be powerful, but only if their outputs are reconciled by a reviewer or strategist. Without that convergence layer, parallelism becomes noise, not leverage.
As you scale, keep a simple orchestration diagram and update it whenever you add or remove an agent role.