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Anthropic FDE Interview Prep

Sub-Agent Orchestration

Explore how sub-agent orchestration divides complex agent tasks into specialized sub-agents within the Claude stack. Learn four orchestration patterns including parallel, sequential, routing, and orchestrator-workers to improve modularity, context isolation, and efficiency. Gain skills to design multi-agent workflows, manage costs, and trace agent activity for better system reliability and clear accountability in applied scenarios.

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A single agent works well until its job grows too wide. One agent that checks contracts, checks budgets, writes notes, and reviews whole batches carries every tool, every instruction, and every intermediate result in one context. Its choices get harder, and its context fills with material that only one step needed.

Sub-agent orchestration splits that work between a coordinator and specialized sub-agents. The coordinator is the agent the user talks to. It decides which sub-agents to use, hands each one a focused task, and combines what they report. Each sub-agent runs in its own fresh context with its own instructions and tools.

How the coordinator arranges that work is the orchestration pattern. This lesson builds four of them for the procurement team, each as a short runnable program.

When sub-agents help

Sub-agents bring four benefits.

  • Context isolation: A sub-agent’s tool calls and results stay in its own context, and only its final report returns to the coordinator.

  • Parallel work: Independent subtasks run at the same time and finish in the time of the slowest one.

  • Specialized instructions: Each sub-agent gets a prompt written for one job.

  • Narrow tools: Each sub-agent gets only the tools its job needs.

They also cost more. Every sub-agent makes its own model calls, and every handoff is a place where information can be lost. A sub-agent sees only the task the coordinator writes for it, with none of the coordinator’s conversation, so that task must carry every fact the sub-agent needs. A single agent stays the default, and sub-agents earn their place when one of the four benefits clearly applies.

The shared procurement tools

All four patterns use the same file, which holds the procurement tools, an audit hook, and a helper that runs an orchestration. ...