Technology Radar
In the previous Radar, we described a team of coding agents as a technique where a developer orchestrates a small set of role-specific agents to collaborate on a coding task. Since then, the barrier to adoption has dropped. Subagent support has become more of a table stakes feature across established coding agent tools, and Claude Code now includes an agent teams feature that provides built-in orchestration. In a team of agents, a primary orchestrator typically coordinates task sequencing and parallelization. Agents should be able to communicate not only with the orchestrator but also with one another. Common use cases include teams of reviewers or groups of implementers responsible for different parts of the application, such as backend and frontend.
Although some in the industry are using the terms "agent teams" and "agent swarms" interchangeably (for example, Claude Code describes its agent teams feature as "our implementation of swarms"), we see value in distinguishing between them. A small, deliberate team of agents collaborating on a task differs significantly from a large swarm in terms of entry barriers, complexity and use cases.
Team of coding agents refers to a technique in which a developer orchestrates multiple AI coding agents, each with a distinct role — for example, architect, back-end specialist, tester — to collaborate on a development task. This practice is supported by tools such as Claude Code, Roo Code and Kilo Code which enable subagents and multiple operating modes. Building on the proven principle that assigning LLMs specific roles and personas improves output quality, the idea is to achieve better results by coordinating multiple role-specific agents rather than relying on a single general-purpose one. The optimal level of agent is still being explored, but it can extend beyond simple one-to-one mappings with traditional team roles. This approach marks a shift toward orchestrated, multi-step AI-assisted development pipelines.
