Agents / Standard term
Orchestrator
A controller that coordinates workflow components by resolving dependencies, routing cases, passing state, collecting results, and applying retry, stop, or fallback rules.
An orchestrator may be deterministic application code, a model-driven controller, a workflow engine, or a combination. A support system can route a known billing code through a fixed rule, use a classifier for ambiguous messages, and send policy conflicts to a specialized authorization path. Orchestration can be centralized or distributed; the important contract is which component owns each decision and state transition.
Builder example
Reliability is distributed across tools, data, models, permissions, and the controller. The orchestrator is a valuable diagnostic surface because it records routes and handoffs, but it cannot repair a broken downstream permission or validator by itself. Test the complete path and preserve correlation identifiers across components.
Common confusion: Deterministic routing is strongest when the condition can be expressed and tested exactly. Model routing can handle semantic ambiguity but needs calibrated evaluation and a consequence-aware fallback. High-stakes does not automatically imply one implementation type; authorization and effect controls must remain independent of the model's classification.