Orchestrators
How orchestrators delegate work to child agents and compile results.
An orchestrator is an agent whose role is set to orchestrator. It doesn't
do the work itself — it breaks a request down and hands pieces to specialist
child agents, then compiles the result.
Two delegation styles
Every orchestrator gets both delegation toolsets at runtime. It picks the style that fits the request; the runtime ensures only one style runs per job.
Inline delegation — assign_<agent>
The orchestrator calls assign_<slug> to hand a task to one child agent and
waits for its result before continuing. Use this for sequential work, or when
the next step depends on what the previous one found.
- Only one assignment per turn.
- After the child returns, either call
return_resultto finish or assign the next step.
Parallel fan-out — create_task
The orchestrator calls create_task once (or several times in the same turn)
to create independent tasks, each with an assigned_to set to a child's slug.
Tasks run concurrently. After creating them the orchestrator ends its turn with
a brief return_result acknowledgment — the task board runs everything in the
background and compiles the answers automatically.
Use depends_on inside create_task to sequence tasks that must run in a
specific order within the same board.
Team block
The orchestrator's system prompt includes a ## Your team section built
entirely from the database at job time: child agent names, slugs, assigned
skills, connectors, and MCP tool inventories. No metadata is hardcoded in the
runner — if you change a child's skills in the dashboard the team block updates
on the next job.
Soft mode lean
An orchestrator's orchestratorMode column (router or planner) is a soft
default preference surfaced in the prompt, not a hard restriction on the
toolset:
- Router lean — the team includes sub-orchestrators; inline
assign_*delegation is usually the right call. - Planner lean — the team is independent workers;
create_taskparallel fan-out is usually the right call for multi-part work.
The model chooses freely; the lean is guidance, not enforcement.
Delegation limits
Delegation depth is capped at 3 levels (parent → child → grandchild). A child that tries to delegate further fails loud. The overall chain-resume limit (15 per job) also applies — a long sequential workflow that needs more than 15 child completions will be killed before it finishes.
See Agents for the full guard table.