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Supervisor-Worker Pattern(SVW)
Orchestrator-worker architecture where a lead agent coordinates specialized subagents for parallel task execution
Complexity: highMulti-Agent
In 30 seconds
- What
- A lead agent breaks work into parallel tasks, spawns specialized subagents to handle each, and collects results for synthesis or quality checks.
- When to use
- Complex problems decomposable into independent subtasks where parallel execution saves time and specialized agents improve accuracy per domain.
- Watch out
- Coordination overhead and result merging complexity often exceed gains unless tasks are truly independent and subagent failures are handled explicitly.
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Supervisor-Worker Pattern: Overview
Orchestrator-worker architecture where a lead agent coordinates specialized subagents for parallel task execution
- Dynamic task decomposition
- Parallel subagent coordination
- Intelligent workload distribution
- Real-time strategy adjustment
- Centralized quality control
- Scalable agent spawning
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Also known as: Supervisor pattern, Multi-agent supervisor, Supervisor-worker architecture
References
The papers, specifications, and repositories this pattern is based on.