Hierarchical Delegation
Hierarchical delegation pattern for multi-agent systems: orchestrating specialized agents with a coordinator for complex tasks.
Last updated
Hierarchical Delegation: Multi-Agent Teams
An orchestrator agent decomposes the mission and delegates to specialists — each with its own context window, tools, and model tier. The pattern behind Claude’s Research mode, and the most expensive way to be right.
A single agent eventually hits three ceilings: the context ceiling (one window must hold research, code, and review at once), the focus ceiling (a prompt juggling six roles does all of them worse), and the tool ceiling (forty tool schemas confuse selection). Hierarchical delegation splits the job like an engineering org: an orchestrator owns the mission, decomposition, and synthesis; specialists own one competency each, with only the tools and context that competency needs. The win is not intelligence — it is isolation. The cost is coordination, and it is never free.
Related
More in LLM & Agentic
LLM Lifecycle
PreviewComplete lifecycle of large language models from pre-training through fine-tuning, RLHF, and deployment — with architecture diagrams and production considerations.
How LLMs Call Tools
PreviewHow LLMs use function calling and tool use — the mechanics behind tool-calling agents, from prompt engineering to structured output.
When to Fine-Tune: The Decision Framework
PreviewShould you fine-tune at all? A structured decision framework for prompt engineering vs RAG vs fine-tuning.
LoRA, QLoRA & PEFT Methods
PreviewHow LoRA works inside transformer layers, QLoRA for memory-efficient training, and the full PEFT method comparison with code examples.
Get full access to all 87+ sections with code examples, diagrams, and interactive animations.
Unlock Premium