Agent Types & Roles (Practical Taxonomy)

Use this skill to choose the right kind of agent workflow for the job.

Common agent “types” (in practice)

1) Chat assistant (no tools)

Best for: explanations, brainstorming, small edits. Risk: can hallucinate; no grounding in repo state.

2) Tool-using single agent

Best for: well-scoped tasks where the agent can read/write files and run commands. Key control: strict DoD gates + minimal permissions.

3) Planner + Executor (2-role pattern)

Best for: medium complexity work (multi-file changes, feature work). Flow: Planner writes plan + acceptance criteria → Executor implements → Reviewer checks.

4) Multi-agent (specialists)

Best for: bigger features with separable workstreams (UI, backend, docs, tests). Rule: isolate context per role; use separate branches/worktrees.

5) Supervisor / orchestrator

Best for: long-running workflows with checkpoints (pipelines, report generation, PAD docs). Rule: supervisor delegates, enforces gates, and composes final output.

Decision rules (fast)

If you can describe it in ≤ 5 steps → single tool-using agent.
If you need tradeoffs/design → Planner + Executor.
If UI + backend + docs/tests all move → multi-agent specialists.
If it’s a pipeline that runs repeatedly → orchestrator.

Guardrails (always)

DoD is the truth gate.
Separate branches/worktrees for parallel work.
Log decisions + commands in AGENT_LOG.md.

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