Conversation Router overview

By the end of this page you will know what this pattern does, when to reach for it, and why your agents’ skills decide how well it works.

What it does

A router reads each incoming message, decides which member agent is best suited to answer, and hands the conversation to it. To the person chatting, it looks like one assistant that happens to be good at everything.

It works turn by turn:

1. A message arrives.
2. The router classifies it against what each member agent can do.
3. One agent answers.
4. The next message is classified again — so the conversation can move between specialists.

Each turn is answered by exactly one agent. The router never fans a question out to several agents, and it never runs a plan-then-verify loop. That focus is what makes it predictable.

Skills are the routing signal

This is the most important idea on this page. The router does not read descriptions you write in the builder. It routes on the skills defined on each member agent — their names, descriptions, tags and example queries.

"What was total revenue last week?"
        │
        ▼
   ┌─────────┐   classify against every member's skills
   │ Router  │──────────────────────────────────┐
   └─────────┘                                  │
        │  best match                            │
        ▼                                        ▼
  Revenue Analyst                        Inventory Specialist
  skill: Sales Lookup                    skill: Stock Check

Well-written skills give you accurate routing with no extra configuration. Vague or overlapping skills are the single biggest cause of messages landing on the wrong agent.

Skills are edited on each agent, not in the builder — see Skills.

When to reach for it

Choose a Conversation Router when your agents cover separate domains and any one of them can answer a message on its own. Support and billing, sales and technical, English and Spanish: one specialist per turn is exactly right.

Choose something else when:

• A single request needs several agents together. Use Planner / Executor, which plans the work across a team.
• You know the sequence and want it every time. Use an Agent Graph.

What a member needs

Members must be AI Agents with status Active, and each needs skills worth routing on. Task Agents cannot be members; expose one as a tool on a member agent instead.

A system with a single member is legal but pointless — the router forwards every message to it.

What it does not do

• It never combines two agents’ answers. One turn, one agent.
• It does not plan. There is no decomposition into steps.
• It does not loop. Nothing is sent back for another pass.

Availability

Starter Starter plan or above, the same as every MAS pattern.

What’s in this section

1. Builder tour — find your way around the router builder.
2. Connect agents — add your specialists.
3. Routing — how a turn is routed, and how to shape it.
4. Fallback & handoff — handle the messages nothing matches.