Pattern
Hub and Spoke
One orchestrator agent owns the plan; worker agents have narrow, well-typed jobs.
When to use
When a task genuinely requires decomposition into specialized sub-tasks (e.g. retrieve, then summarize, then critique). When the orchestrator can reliably classify the sub-task category. When each worker can fail in isolation without poisoning the others.
When not to use
When the orchestrator's classification step is itself the bottleneck (mis-routing kills accuracy). When the sub-tasks can run as a deterministic pipeline (use Workflow First instead). When you have fewer than 3 worker types.