Routing and Handoffs Pattern

Routing and handoffs decide who should handle a task—and when control should move.

Why routing matters

Not every request needs your most expensive agent. A good router:

• Sends FAQ to RAG chat
• Sends refunds to a policy workflow
• Sends ambiguous investigations to a deep agent
• Escalates abuse/safety cases

Router designs

1. Rules first — keywords, customer tier, intent classifiers
2. Model router — LLM chooses a destination from an enum
3. Hybrid — rules for safety, model for nuance

Handoff payload

Always pass:

• Goal and constraints
• Normalized state
• What already failed
• Confidence / risk flags

Failure modes

• Router thrash (A→B→A)
• Losing context on handoff
• Routing to agents lacking tools

Evaluation

Measure misroute rate, average cost by class, and time-to-resolution vs a single default agent.