Choosing Swarm Patterns

If you're building multi-agent systems with Agent Relay, this is the pattern reference you'll want open. It covers all 24 swarm patterns the engine supports, from the core 10 (fan-out, pipeline, hub-spoke, consensus, mesh, handoff, cascade, dag, debate, hierarchical) to 14 specialized ones like map-reduce and red-team. The decision framework is genuinely helpful for picking between them, and crucially, the YAML examples match the actual API surface. One caveat: hierarchical currently resolves to the same single-level topology as hub-spoke despite the name implying multi-level trees. Best used as a reference when you're staring at a coordination problem and need to know which pattern name to drop into that swarm.pattern field.

GitHub stars: 719
last updated: Jun 11, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add agentworkforce/relay --skill choosing-swarm-patterns --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Overview

The Agent Relay SDK (@agent-relay/sdk) supports 24 swarm patterns via a single swarm.pattern field. Patterns are configured declaratively in YAML — there are no standalone fanOut(...) / hubAndSpoke(...) helpers. Pick the simplest pattern that solves the problem; add complexity only when the system proves it's insufficient.

Run a pattern

TypeScript SDK runner

import { runWorkflow } from '@agent-relay/sdk/workflows';
const run = await runWorkflow('workflows/feature-dev.yaml', {
  vars: { task: 'Add OAuth login' },
});