One agent to run the others

You'll finish with: An orchestrator that routes work to the right specialist.

One agent on its own becomes a generalist — it does everything, badly. A hundred agents is worse: their descriptions overlap, the wrong one gets picked, and nobody maintains them.

The shape that actually works is one agent that holds the context and hands work to a few specialists.

One orchestrator, a handful of specialists

Chief of
Staff

Researcherread-only

Proposaldrafts

Reviewerread-only

Adminfiles

Four to six specialists. Not one, not forty.

Why one alone fails

A single agent that researches, writes, reviews and files ends up with every tool switched on and a prompt trying to cover four jobs. It reviews its own work — which it will always pass.

Why forty fails

Claude picks who to hand work to by reading descriptions. Two agents that sound similar means it picks wrong, and you can't tell why. Every extra agent makes the routing worse, not better.

The test: could you explain to a new staff member, in one sentence each, who does what and why they never overlap? If not, you have too many.

What the orchestrator does

Holds your business context — it's the one that read CLAUDE.md
Decides which specialist gets the job
Takes their output and gives you one answer, not four
Never does the specialist work itself

Keeping the routing clean

Descriptions must not overlap. Say what each one does and when to use it.

✗ Two agents both described as "handles client work"
✓ "Researches before a call" and "Reviews before anything sends"

Do this now

List your agents and write each one's job in a single sentence.
Any two sentences that could describe the same task — merge them or sharpen both.
Save the orchestrator below as .claude/agents/chief.md
Ask it something broad: "get me ready for a call with [company]" and watch it route.

---
name: chief
description: Main coordinator. Use for any request that
  spans more than one job, or when it's unclear who should
  handle it. Routes to specialists and returns one answer.
tools: Agent, Read, Grep, Glob
model: sonnet
memory: project
---

You coordinate. You do not do the specialist work yourself.

1. Read CLAUDE.md so you hold the business context.
2. Break the request into jobs.
3. Hand each job to the right specialist:
   - researcher — anything needing outside information
   - proposal-writer — turning notes into a client document
   - reviewer — anything about to leave the business
   - admin — filing, renaming, tidying, extracting
4. If no specialist fits, say so. Don't do it yourself.
5. Return ONE answer. Not four reports stapled together.

If two specialists could handle it, pick one and say why.
Never send anything. Never quote a price. Drafts only.

How to know it worked

Give it a request needing two specialists — "research this company and draft an opener". You should get one answer back, with the research folded into the draft.

If it does the research itself instead of handing off, check Agent is on its tools line — without that tool it has no way to call anyone, so it just does the job itself. If Agent is there and it still won't delegate, the specialists' descriptions are too vague for it to match against.

That's the course

You've got an orchestrator holding your context and a small team under it, each with one job and only the access that job needs. Next: putting locks on the four hard limits, in Gates and Hooks.

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