What is Agent Orchestration?
Agent orchestration is the coordination of multiple AI agents working together on complex tasks, managing their execution order, communication, resource sharing, and error handling across a workflow.
WHY IT MATTERS
A single agent can handle simple tasks. Complex operations — like multi-step code refactoring involving analysis, testing, and deployment across multiple services — require multiple specialised agents working in concert.
Orchestration patterns include sequential pipelines (agent A then B then C), parallel fan-out (multiple agents work simultaneously), hierarchical delegation (a manager agent assigns work), and event-driven (agents react to triggers). The choice depends on the task structure and latency requirements.
Multi-agent orchestration amplifies the policy enforcement challenge. Each agent may connect to different MCP servers, use different tools, and operate with different authority levels. Without centralised policy enforcement, each agent is a separate attack surface.
HOW POLICYLAYER USES THIS
PolicyLayer provides consistent policy enforcement across multi-agent orchestrations. Each agent's MCP connection can be routed through PolicyLayer with its own YAML policy file — ensuring that a research agent has read-only tool access whilst a deployment agent has write access, and neither can exceed its authorised scope. Policies are enforced uniformly regardless of which agent in the orchestration makes the tool call.