> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.komodor.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Orchestrator

> The catalog agent that routes work to other agents — running a declarative workflow over your fleet, or executing one orchestrated step of a module workflow.

**KAOP Workflow Orchestrator** is the Komodor Agentic Operation Platform (KAOP) catalog agent that
does no specialist work itself: it decides which agents should, delegates to them, and combines what
comes back. It runs a declarative
workflow over your fleet, and it is also the account's executor for a module workflow's
`orchestrated` steps.

It delegates over agent-to-agent invocation through the control plane, so every specialist call is
authorized and recorded like any other run rather than becoming an unobserved side channel.

## Running a workflow

A workflow is steps that fan out to several specialists at once, run in order, or loop until the
work is done.

| Behaviour                     | What it means                                                                                                           |
| ----------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Named or chosen**           | A step can name the specialist to call, or hand the choice to a lead agent that picks from a roster you define.         |
| **Failure is contained**      | A specialist that fails or times out does not fail the workflow — its step records the failure and the rest carries on. |
| **Roster without a workflow** | Given only a roster and no workflow, it loops, deciding for itself who to call, until it judges the goal met.           |

The contained-failure behaviour is the one to design around: a workflow finishing does not mean
every step succeeded, so read the steps rather than the outcome.

## Executing an orchestrated step

A module workflow's steps come in two kinds, and the orchestrator handles one of them:

| Step kind           | What runs it                                                                                                                 |
| ------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **`orchestrated`**  | A run of the step-orchestrator agent, scoped to the specialists that step binds. Each specialist call is its own trace span. |
| **`deterministic`** | A registered handler, invoked in process — not this agent.                                                                   |

Either way the outcome is written back onto the step run, which is the only place a caller learns
what happened.

<Note>
  An account has one step executor: whichever agent holds the `step-orchestrator` role is the one
  every orchestrated step dispatches to. Deploying a second does not give you two — it gives you a
  question about which one holds the role.
</Note>

You do not usually invoke this path directly. It is what makes a module's workflow steps run, and it
matters when you are reading a workflow's traces or working out why a step routed the way it did.

## Next steps

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Orchestration" href="/manage-your-agents/run/orchestration">
    Steps, agent binding, and the orchestrator-and-specialist pattern.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Agent catalog" href="/manage-your-agents/build/catalog/overview">
    Every deployable agent, and what each one is for.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Modules & workflows" href="/modules-and-workflows/overview">
    The packaged workflows these steps belong to.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Runs & evidence" href="/manage-your-agents/run/runs-evidence">
    Reading a delegated run and the spans that link it.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>


## Related topics

- [Orchestration](/manage-your-agents/run/orchestration.md)
- [Modules & workflows](/modules-and-workflows/overview.md)
- [Use specialized agents](/manage-your-agents/build/use-specialized-agents.md)
- [Runs & evidence](/manage-your-agents/run/runs-evidence.md)
- [How Run works](/manage-your-agents/run/how-it-works.md)