Orchestration is how work gets routed across agents, tools, phases, and review points. It’s the difference between asking one AI to “handle everything” and giving the work a real operating plan: one agent researches, another writes, another inspects, a human approves the risky change, and the orchestrator keeps those pieces from becoming chaos. Good orchestration covers sequence, scope, and judgment: which work runs in parallel, which must wait, which change needs review before it lands.
Consider a general contractor building a house. They don’t hang every door or wire every outlet. Their job is knowing what has to happen, in what order, which specialist does which part, and when the work needs inspection.
Why you care
Without orchestration, you either overload one agent or become the traffic controller yourself. With it, you talk to the lead, who routes the work and reports back, so your attention stays on the outcome. A handoff becomes a natural checkpoint in the workflow, and the system knows when to move, when to ask for help, and when to stop. The point is the right work going to the right place at the right time.