Worker Agent

What is a Worker Agent

A worker agent is an agent that handles one defined role inside a larger, coordinated system: a reviewer that only reviews, a writer that only drafts content, a tester that only runs and reports on tests. It is dispatched by an orchestrator rather than deciding on its own what the fleet needs next, and its scope is deliberately narrower than the whole project.

This narrow scope is what makes a fleet of worker agents manageable: each one's context only has to hold what its specific role requires, not the entire system's state. The orchestrator holds the bigger picture, worker agents hold the depth needed for their one job, and the two only exchange a defined report at the boundary.

A worker agent is closely related to a subagent, the difference is mostly one of framing: subagent usually describes a single dispatched run inside one session, while worker agent describes a standing role in an ongoing multi-agent system, sometimes a persistent pane or process rather than a one-off dispatch.