multi-agent-orchestration

Multi-Agent Orchestration

Overview

This skill provides a framework for designing and managing multi-agent systems where specialized agents collaborate on complex, multi-stage workflows. It emphasizes clear agent boundaries, structured communication, and robust error isolation.

When To Use

• When tasks are too large or diverse for a single agent (scope creep).
• When specific domain expertise (e.g., database design, UI/UX, security) is required in separate, modular contexts.
• To maintain clean separation of concerns and reduce context window degradation.
• When you need to delegate parallelizable work to maximize throughput.

Topology Patterns

• Hierarchical Supervisor: A central supervisor agent delegates sub-tasks to specialized workers, aggregates their results, and provides final synthesis.
• Swarm Handoffs: Agents pass tasks directly to the next appropriate agent based on completion criteria, forming a chain or graph of expertise.
• Router-Worker: A router analyzes incoming requests and dispatches them to a specific pool of workers based on classification.
• Blackboard: Multiple agents read from and write to a shared persistent state (the "blackboard") until a task objective is satisfied.
• Round-Robin Debate: Agents with opposing viewpoints propose solutions, iterate, and refine based on peer criticism to improve quality.

Communication Protocols

• Agent-to-Agent (A2A): Always use structured message framing.
• Structured Payloads: Encapsulate tasks, constraints, and dependencies in a common JSON format or structured Markdown.
• Return Summaries: Every subagent MUST return a concise summary of work done, resources created, and final status (SUCCESS/FAIL/BLOCKED) before closing the conversation.

Context Isolation & Boundary Hand-offs

• Ephemeral Context: Spawn subagents with only the minimal, high-signal information needed for their specific task.
• Avoid Token Bloat: Do not pass the entire parent conversation history unless strictly necessary. Pass pointers to file locations or artifact links instead.
• Clean State: Each subagent should operate within its own branched workspace to prevent side effects on the parent or other subagents.