glossary
what is agent orchestration?
Agent orchestration is when one AI agent coordinates other agents instead of doing the work itself. It's the difference between one developer doing everything and a tech lead delegating tasks to a team.
the problem
AI agents are great at focused tasks: implement this feature, review this PR, fix this bug. But a single agent doing everything on a large project hits limits fast. Its context window fills up. It loses track of earlier decisions. It tries to plan, implement, and review all in one conversation and the quality drops.
This is the same problem human teams solved a long time ago: you don't have one person do everything. You have people specialize, and someone coordinates.
how orchestration works
- You talk to the orchestrator. "I need these three issues worked on."
- It breaks the work down. One task per agent, each in its own isolated workspace.
- It starts specialized agents. An implementation agent for coding, a review agent for checking, a test agent for validation.
- It checks on progress. Reads what each agent is doing, answers their questions, moves work forward.
- It reports to you. "Issue 1 is done and ready for review. Issue 2 needs your input on the API design. Issue 3 is still running."
why it's better than one agent
Clean context. Each agent starts fresh with only the information it needs. No leftover planning notes cluttering the implementation agent's context.
Parallel work. Three agents can work on three issues at the same time. One agent can only do one thing at a time.
Independent review. A review agent that didn't write the code catches things the author wouldn't. Same principle as human code review.
You stay in control. You talk to one orchestrator instead of managing five agents yourself. The orchestrator handles the coordination.
orchestration in pane
Pane Chat is Pane's built-in orchestrator. You talk to it in one conversation, and it uses the runpane CLI to create panes, start agents, check their output, and report results.
You can also build your own orchestrator. Anything that can run terminal commands (Codex, Claude Code, a shell script, cron) can use runpane to control the workspace. Pane doesn't lock you into one approach.
further reading
- Building Effective Agents — Anthropic's guide to agent patterns
- What Is an Agent Loop? — the repeating pattern for orchestration
- Pane Chat — the built-in orchestrator
- Set Up Your First Agent Loop — the practical how-to
- What Is an Agent Manager? — how managers and orchestrators relate
Last updated June 24, 2026