1yihui Agent Team Orchestration
Production playbook for running multi-agent teams with clear roles, structured task flow, and quality gates.
Quick Start: Minimal 2-Agent Team
A builder and a reviewer. The simplest useful team.
1. Define Roles
Orchestrator (you) — Route tasks, track state, report results
Builder agent — Execute work, produce artifacts
2. Spawn a Task
1. Create task record (file, DB, or task board)
2. Spawn builder with:
- Task ID and description
- Output path for artifacts
- Handoff instructions (what to produce, where to put it)
3. On completion: review artifacts, mark done, report
3. Add a Reviewer
Builder produces artifact → Reviewer checks it → Orchestrator ships or returns
That's the core loop. Everything below scales this pattern.
Core Concepts
Roles
Every agent has one primary role. Overlap causes confusion.
| Role | Purpose | Model guidance |
|---|---|---|
| Orchestrator | Route work, track state, make priority calls | High-reasoning model (handles judgment) |
| Builder | Produce artifacts — code, docs, configs | Can use cost-effective models for mechanical work |
| Reviewer | Verify quality, push back on gaps | High-reasoning model (catches what builders miss) |
| Ops | Cron jobs, standups, health checks, dispatching | Cheapest model that's reliable |
→ Read references/team-setup.md when defining a new team or adding agents.
Task States
Every task moves through a defined lifecycle:
Inbox → Assigned → In Progress → Review → Done | Failed
Rules:
- Orchestrator owns state transitions — don't rely on agents to update their own status
- Every transition gets a comment (who, what, why)
- Failed is a valid end state — capture why and move on
→ Read references/task-lifecycle.md when designing task flows or debugging stuck tasks.
Handoffs
When work passes between agents, the handoff message includes:
- What was done — summary of changes/output
- Where artifacts are — exact file paths
- How to verify — test commands or acceptance criteria
- Known issues — anything incomplete or risky
- What's next — clear next action for the receiving agent
Bad handoff: "Done, check the files."
Good handoff: "Built auth module at /shared/artifacts/auth/. Run npm test auth to verify. Known issue: rate limiting not implemented yet. Next: reviewer checks error handling edge cases."
Reviews
Cross-role reviews prevent quality drift:
- Builders review specs — "Is this feasible? What's missing?"
- Reviewers check builds — "Does this match the spec? Edge cases?"
- Orchestrator reviews priorities — "Is this the right work right now?"
Skip the review step and quality degrades within 3-5 tasks. Every time.
→ Read references/communication.md when setting up agent communication channels. → Read references/patterns.md for proven multi-step workflows.
Reference Files
| File | Read when... |
|---|---|
| team-setup.md | Defining agents, roles, models, workspaces |
| task-lifecycle.md | Designing task states, transitions, comments |
| communication.md | Setting up async/sync communication, artifact paths |
| patterns.md | Implementing specific workflows (spec→build→test, parallel research, escalation) |
Common Pitfalls
Spawning without clear artifact output paths
Agent produces great work, but you can't find it. Always specify the exact output path in the spawn prompt. Use a shared artifacts directory with predictable structure.
No review step = quality drift
"It's a small change, skip review." Do this three times and you have compounding errors. Every artifact gets at least one set of eyes that didn't produce it.
Agents not commenting on task progress
Silent agents create coordination blind spots. Require comments at: start, blocker, handoff, completion. If an agent goes silent, assume it's stuck.
Not verifying agent capabilities before assigning
Assigning browser-based testing to an agent without browser access. Assigning image work to a text-only model. Check capabilities before routing.
Orchestrator doing execution work
The orchestrator routes and tracks — it doesn't build. The moment you start "just quickly doing this one thing," you've lost oversight of the rest of the team.
When NOT to Use This Skill
- Single-agent setups — Just follow standard AGENTS.md conventions. Team orchestration adds overhead that solo agents don't need.
- One-off task delegation — Use
sessions_spawndirectly. This skill is for sustained workflows with multiple handoffs. - Simple question routing — If you're just forwarding a question to a specialist, that's a message, not a workflow.
This skill is for sustained team workflows — recurring collaboration patterns where agents depend on each other's output over multiple tasks.