Agents & tools · Glossary term
What is Delegation?
Assigning a bounded subtask to another person or agent together with the needed context, authority, output contract, and return conditions.
Why does Delegation matter?
Explicit delegation enables specialization and parallel work without losing ownership, scope, or the ability to integrate results.
Delegation in practice
Give a reviewer agent the exact files, rubric, evidence, and deadline, then require it to return findings rather than silently modifying the primary artifact.
What is the common confusion about Delegation?
Sending a vague message to another agent is not reliable delegation. The receiver needs a scope contract and a defined handoff back.
Learn Delegation in the course
No lesson links to this term yet. Search the course catalog for it.
Related terms
- Scope ContractA concrete agreement that defines a task's goal, allowed and forbidden surfaces, expected artifacts, verification requirements, and…
- HandoffA structured transfer of a task between people or agents that preserves the objective, current state, evidence, decisions, constraints,…
- Reviewer AgentAn agent assigned to inspect another agent's artifact or decision against explicit criteria and return findings or a verdict.
- OrchestrationThe control logic that sequences, branches, delegates, retries, pauses, resumes, and terminates work across model and tool steps.
Sources
More terms in Agents & tools
- Agent
- Agent Harness
- Agent Memory
- Agent State
- Agent Skill
- Approval Gate
- Checkpoint
- Compensating Action
- Durable Execution
- Function Calling
- Human-in-the-Loop (HITL)
- MCP (Model Context Protocol)
- Multi Round-Trip Request (MRTR)
- Orchestration
- Planning
- ReAct
- Sandbox
- Skill Bundle
- Skill Catalog
- Skill Discovery
- Skill Invocation
- Stateless MCP
- Structured Output
- Swarm
- Termination Condition
- Tool Contract
This entry comes from glossary/terms.md on GitHub. Browse all 250 glossary terms.