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DecimalAI supports multi-agent architectures where one agent delegates work to others.

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How Multi-Agent Tracing Works

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Orchestrator

An orchestrator is an agent that delegates work to other agents. DecimalAI infers orchestrator status from two signals:
  1. The manifest contains component_type="subagent" components
  2. Other traces reference this agent’s traces via parent_trace_id
There is no explicit “is_orchestrator” flag — it’s a derived role. An agent can be both a sub-agent of one orchestrator AND an orchestrator of other sub-agents (nested delegation).

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Sub-agent

A sub-agent is an agent that receives delegated work. Identified by a trace having parent_trace_id set, pointing to the orchestrator’s trace.

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Delegation vs Handoff

These are two distinct multi-agent patterns:
Orchestrator vs Parent Trace: These operate at different levels. An orchestrator is an agent (a role). A parent trace is a specific trace record that child traces link back to (a data relationship). An orchestrator agent produces many parent traces over time.

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Status Propagation

When a sub-agent trace fails:

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Drift

Drift occurs when a sub-agent’s actual configuration diverges from what the orchestrator’s manifest expects. For example, the orchestrator’s manifest references search-agent v1.0 but recent traces show search-agent using different tools. The Sub-Agent Health Dashboard flags this.

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Next

Skills & Data Pipeline

How DecimalAI turns evaluated, compatible traces into training data.

Multi-Agent Guide

Hands-on guide to instrumenting multi-agent systems.