Orchestrator design
Turn an objective into bounded work, independent review and traceable integration.
The orchestrator coordinates; it should not personally do every job. It refreshes state, reconciles claims, prevents path collisions, activates well-specified jobs, dispatches the right model, assigns independent review, enforces exact-head CI/review gates, records receipts and checkpoints, then adapts the topology when work changes.
The orchestrator is the foreman, not the whole construction crew. It decides what jobs exist, makes sure two crews are not drilling into the same wall, sends each job to a suitable worker, gets somebody independent to inspect it, and only then lets the finished piece join the building.
Primitive separates job authority from execution resources. A Claude, Codex, Gemini or OpenRouter model can execute work without owning the orchestrator role. The orchestrator's real value is maintaining one coherent state: objective, scope, leases, paths, review independence, build evidence, usage/cost and next action.
The orchestration loop
Role × Scale × Scope × Authority stay separate
| Dimension | Question | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Role | What function? | Builder / reviewer / researcher |
| Scale | At what recursive level? | System / Cell / Unit |
| Scope | What may it work on? | Repo / project / paths / task |
| Authority | What effects may it cause? | Read / write / merge / deploy / spend |
Independent review is a contract, not a vibe
- The reviewer family must differ from every author's family where independence is required.
- The verdict must apply to the exact PR head that will merge.
- Canonical CI must be green; skipped is not green.
- No unresolved HIGH/BLOCKER may survive the gate.
- Shared-file PRs are integrated serially and rechecked after base sync.
Five-hour windows make the orchestration objective explicit
At takeover, an orchestrator records one objective, one ordered sequence, up to three evidence-bearing outcomes, exclusions and usage state. At the review time it records ACHIEVED, PARTIAL or BLOCKED and either starts a new window, hands over or parks the seat.
Blocked work should create a signal, not a silent queue
A blocked lane should signal its parent/orchestrator. The parent may repair, reallocate, escalate or contract the lane subject to its authority and topology budget. Fixed seats are not the goal; justified capacity is.
Related pages
Canonical sources
These pages are explanatory read models. Where wording conflicts with implementation or a Control decision, the linked implementation/decision is authoritative and this page should be corrected.