Copilot Orchestrator Agent (experimental)

File: .github/agents/tsh-copilot-orchestrator.agent.md

The Copilot Orchestrator coordinates complex, multi-step Copilot customization tasks using specialized sub-agents. It decomposes work into focused subtasks, delegates to workers, and synthesizes results.

When to Use

Use the Orchestrator instead of the Copilot Engineer when the task involves:

• Creating an agent from scratch (requires research → design → create → review).
• Auditing all customization artifacts for consistency.
• Designing multi-agent systems.
• Any task that spans multiple phases of research, creation, and review.

For simple and medium tasks, the Copilot Engineer may produce better results.

How It Works

The Orchestrator solves the "context rot" problem — complex tasks degrade quality when handled by a single agent in one long conversation. Instead, it delegates to three specialized workers, each running in an isolated context window:

1. Copilot Researcher (tsh-copilot-researcher) — Analyzes existing codebase state, reads documentation, extracts patterns.
2. Copilot Artifact Creator (tsh-copilot-artifact-creator) — Creates or modifies files based on fully specified requirements.
3. Copilot Artifact Reviewer (tsh-copilot-artifact-reviewer) — Validates quality, consistency, and best practices.

The standard flow is: Research → Design decisions → Create → Review → Fix (if needed).

Key Principles

• Context is precious — The orchestrator's context contains only user interactions, design decisions, and synthesized summaries. Raw research output stays in worker contexts.
• Delegate execution, retain judgment — The orchestrator makes design decisions. Workers execute. Output is always validated.
• Prompt is the interface — Workers receive only the delegation prompt, no conversation history. Quality depends entirely on prompt clarity.

Tool Access

Tool	Usage
Sequential Thinking	Decompose complex tasks, evaluate design trade-offs
File Read/Search	Read and search workspace files for context
Sub-agents	Delegate to specialized worker agents (researcher, creator, reviewer)
Todo	Track orchestration progress with structured checklists

Sub-Agents

Worker	When Delegated
tsh-copilot-researcher	Analyzing existing files, extracting patterns, reading docs
tsh-copilot-artifact-creator	Creating or modifying customization files
tsh-copilot-artifact-reviewer	Validating quality and consistency of artifacts
tsh-copilot-engineer	Moderately complex subtasks that don't decompose cleanly

Delegation Flow

User Request
    │
    ▼
┌──────────────────┐
│   Orchestrator    │ ← Design decisions live here
└──────┬───────────┘
       │
  ┌────┼────────────────┐
  ▼    ▼                ▼
Research  →  Create  →  Review
  │           │           │
  └───────────┴───────────┘
       │
       ▼
  Synthesized Results → User