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Handoff Orchestration(HO)
Dynamic delegation where agents intelligently transfer control based on context and specialized capabilities
In 30 seconds
- What
- Routes requests between specialized agents based on detected context, transferring full state and control to the best-matched agent.
- When to use
- Problems span multiple domains where different agents excel, and routing decisions depend on issue content rather than fixed rules.
- Watch out
- Handoffs can loop or stall if agents misclassify problems or context gets corrupted during transfer between systems.
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Handoff Orchestration: Overview
Dynamic delegation where agents intelligently transfer control based on context and specialized capabilities
- Context-aware routing
- Dynamic delegation
- Capability matching
- Seamless transitions
- Full control transfer
- Intelligent escalation
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Also known as: Intelligent agent handoffs, Agent handoff mechanisms, Agent-to-agent handoff
References
The papers, specifications, and repositories this pattern is based on.
- A Survey on Context-Aware Multi-Agent Systems: Techniques, Challenges and Future Directions (Du et al., 2024)arXiv:2402.01968
- Advancing Multi-Agent Systems Through Model Context Protocol (Krishnan, 2025)
- Multi-Agent Coordination across Diverse Applications: A Survey (2025)
- AI Agents: Evolution, Architecture, and Real-World Applications (2025)
- Microsoft AutoGen v0.4 - Asynchronous Event-Driven Architecture (2024)
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