Compare Sequential Workflow and Supervisor Patterns

Select the appropriate Select AI agent-team pattern based on how the team must select workers and coordinate tasks.

Select the sequential workflow pattern when the team must run configured agent-task pairs in a known order. Select the supervisor pattern when the team must select workers at run time based on the request, intermediate results, failures, or requests for more information.

Characteristic	Sequential Workflow Pattern	Supervisor Pattern
Run plan	Fixed. The agents array defines the workflow order.	Variable. The supervisor selects the next worker at run time.
Entry point	The first configured agent-task pair.	The supervisor agent.
Task selection	The team runs configured agent-task pairs in order.	The supervisor calls one or more workers as needed.
Context passing	Task dependencies pass prior task output to downstream tasks.	The supervisor sends each worker a self-contained subtask.
Best suited for	Predictable pipelines with known stages.	Variable requests that need conditional routing or coordination.
Parallel runs	Not supported. Tasks run one at a time.	Not supported. Worker subtasks run one at a time.