Agent Orchestra
Spicy — senior dev territoryAI & ML
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
An agent orchestra is a group of AI agents with a conductor — one lead agent that coordinates specialists. Different from a swarm (flat, peer-to-peer): the orchestra has hierarchy. The conductor decides who plays when.
Real Talk
An agent orchestra is a hierarchical multi-agent architecture where an orchestrator agent decomposes tasks and dispatches work to specialist sub-agents. Contrasted with swarm topologies, orchestra patterns offer clearer control flow and debugging. Common in coding agents (e.g., Claude Code subagents, Cursor composer modes) and complex workflows.
When You'll Hear This
"We run an agent orchestra — conductor plus specialists for lint, test, deploy." / "Orchestras beat swarms when tasks decompose hierarchically."