# What Is Agent Orchestration?

> Agent orchestration is the coordination layer that routes tasks between agents, manages state, handles failures, and enforces guardrails across a multi-step or multi-agent workflow.

**Term:** Agent Orchestration  
**Category:** Operations  
**Also known as:** agent coordination, workflow orchestration  
**Updated:** 2026-07-22  
**Canonical:** https://www.frameworkr.com/glossary/agent-orchestration

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**Agent orchestration** is the coordination layer that manages how agents execute work — routing tasks, maintaining state, handling failures, and enforcing limits across single-agent loops or multi-agent systems.

If the agent loop is "what one agent does step by step," orchestration is "how the whole system runs reliably."

## What orchestration handles

- **Task routing** — Which agent or tool handles this step?
- **State management** — What happened so far? What's the current status?
- **Error recovery** — Retry, fallback, or escalate when a step fails
- **Parallelism** — Running independent steps concurrently
- **Human handoffs** — Pausing for approval before high-stakes actions
- **Observability** — Logging, tracing, and cost tracking across steps

## Orchestration vs. the agent loop

| | Agent loop | Orchestration |
|---|---|---|
| **Scope** | One agent's perceive-reason-act cycle | The entire workflow |
| **Runs in** | Model + runtime | Framework or custom coordinator |
| **Decides** | Next tool call or response | Which agent runs, when to retry, when to stop |

Frameworks like LangGraph, Temporal, and Eve provide orchestration primitives. The choice depends on complexity, team familiarity, and production requirements.

## Related reading

See [Agent Loop](/glossary/agent-loop) for the inner cycle, and [Guardrails](/glossary/guardrails) for safety boundaries orchestration must enforce.

## Related terms

- [agent loop](https://www.frameworkr.com/glossary/agent-loop.md)
- [multi agent system](https://www.frameworkr.com/glossary/multi-agent-system.md)
- [agent architecture](https://www.frameworkr.com/glossary/agent-architecture.md)
- [guardrails](https://www.frameworkr.com/glossary/guardrails.md)


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_Published by Frameworkr — https://www.frameworkr.com_