What is Orchestration?

The layer that decides which agent or tool runs next, passes data between them, and handles failures — the 'conductor' of a multi-agent system.

How it works

In a single agent the loop is the orchestrator. In multi-agent systems you need explicit routing, retries, and state handoffs. Good orchestration is invisible; bad orchestration is where most production agent bugs live.

Example

In practiceAn orchestrator routes a customer request to a billing agent or a tech-support agent based on intent, and retries with backoff if one fails.

Build orchestration or use a framework?

Start with a simple explicit loop you understand. Frameworks help at scale but hide the failure modes you need to see first.

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