Orchestrator
The top-level agent or controller that routes work to specialists in a multi-agent system.
Last updated: April 26, 2026
Definition
The orchestrator is the conductor: it decomposes the user's task into subtasks and dispatches each to the right specialist (sub-agent). Two design choices matter most. First: does the orchestrator make a full plan upfront, or does it route step-by-step based on observations? Second: do specialists return results to the orchestrator, or hand off directly to each other? Most production systems use centralized orchestration with step-by-step routing. Easier to debug, easier to add tracing, easier to add human-in-the-loop checkpoints.
When To Use
Required as soon as you have 2+ specialists. The orchestrator centralizes logging, retry, and cost monitoring. Without it, debugging a multi-agent failure is misery.
Building with Orchestrator?
I've shipped this pattern in real production systems. If you want a second pair of eyes on your architecture, that's what I do.