Agent orchestration

What it is

Agent orchestration is the layer above the agents themselves: it decides which task goes to which agent, watches whether that agent is still making progress, and moves finished work to the next step, whether that's a review, a merge, or a human's approval. One agent running in a terminal tab doesn't need this. A handful of tasks moving through a team does, and the need only grows from there: ten tasks across three people and two machines is already too much for anyone to track by memory.

Why it matters to you

Without orchestration, running several agents means several terminal tabs, several mental notes about which one is stuck, and no shared view of what's actually done. Orchestration turns that into a backlog anyone on the team can look at, staffed automatically instead of by whoever happens to be watching. For a non-technical founder, it's the difference between hoping an agent finished and being able to check, and it's the difference between a task quietly stalling for a day and someone noticing within the hour.

How it works in CodeHerder

CodeHerder is the orchestrator: it staffs a backlog of tasks across every device you've registered, routes each one to an agent with the right capability, and moves it through a configurable stage sequence: plan → code → review → merge → verify. The full platform walk-through, from workspace setup to a finished task, is on the how it works page, including what happens automatically and where a human is still expected to weigh in.

• How it works →

What people get wrong

It's tempting to assume orchestration means CodeHerder is doing the coding itself, or replacing the agent with something smarter. It isn't. The agent still writes the code; orchestration schedules and routes the work, then holds someone accountable for what happens once it's done. The other common mix-up is treating orchestration as pure automation with nobody watching. It's closer to a shift schedule: the work gets staffed and tracked without a person having to push every task along by hand, but the checkpoints that matter are still there.