Agent orchestration

What is agent orchestration?

Agent orchestration is coordinating several AI agents so each does its part in the right order and their work comes together into one result. An orchestrator, which can be code or another agent, hands out tasks, passes context between agents and assembles what comes back. Agents can run in sequence, in parallel, or hand work to whichever agent fits.

Why it matters to a revenue leader

Anyone who has run a dispatch board knows the hard part is the handoff, getting each job to the right tech with the information they need. Agents have the same problem. When a research agent passes a weak account summary to a writing agent, the outreach comes out wrong and nobody sees why. Microsoft's architecture guidance advises using the lowest level of complexity that reliably meets the need, because each added layer brings coordination overhead, latency and cost. Anthropic's engineering guidance likewise says to find the simplest solution that works and add complexity only when simpler setups fall short. For a leader, orchestration decides whether an AI setup can be trusted with customer work.

A fire protection company wants AI help with renewal season. One agent pulls each customer's inspection history, a second drafts the renewal summary, and a third checks pricing against the current rate card. The orchestrator runs them in order and routes every draft to the account manager before anything reaches a customer.