Coordinator agent
Also called orchestrator agent, lead agent, coordinator-subagent pattern
In a multi-agent system, the agent that splits a job into parts, hands each to a sub-agent and combines what comes back.
A coordinator doesn't do the searching or the writing itself. It decides how the job divides, writes each sub-agent a brief, decides what happens when one fails, and pulls the results together. Sub-agents start with none of its conversation, so whatever they need, from file paths to what's already known, has to be in that brief.
That makes the coordinator the place where many multi-agent faults begin: a topic split too narrowly, a brief missing a constraint, a failure reported back as "unavailable" with nothing to decide on. A sub-agent that says what failed, what it tried and what it found gives the coordinator a real choice.
For example
Asked how remote work changed city centres, a coordinator gives property, transport and local spending to 3 sub-agents, then checks for gaps before the report is written.
Put it to use
Where you'll meet coordinator agent in ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, how to use it there, and the mix-up most people make.
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