Agentic glossary

An LLM in a loop that decides its own next step until it judges the task done. Three properties: autonomy, tool use, action loop.

Send messages → inspect stop_reason → if tool_use, execute + append tool_result → call again → if end_turn, done.

A delegated worker LLM with its own context window and tool set. Returns only a summary to the caller. Does NOT inherit the caller's conversation history — pass context explicitly.

The top-level agent in a hub-and-spoke multi-agent system. Plans, dispatches subagents, synthesizes. All communication routes through it — subagents never talk to each other directly.

The Agent SDK primitive for spawning a subagent. Emit multiple Task calls in a single response to spawn subagents in parallel and reduce round-trip latency.

Pattern where a coordinator plans at runtime and dispatches worker subagents. Different from a workflow — the plan is decided by the model, not pre-written.