Router Pattern

One monolithic agent handling everything is slow, expensive, and mediocre at each task. Routers send simple FAQs to a cheap bot, code questions to a coding agent, and billing issues to a RAG pipeline with CRM access.

A router is a hospital triage nurse — they don't treat you; they send you to the right department based on your symptoms.

Scenario

Incoming chat: router classifies as 'refund_request' (0.92 confidence) → routes to refund agent with Stripe tool access. 'How do I reset password?' → routes to auth FAQ agent.

Solution

In Agent Design Patterns, apply Router Pattern to this scenario: Incoming chat: router classifies as 'refund_request' (0. Identify the inputs, run the technique, validate the output, and note one thing you would monitor in production.

Do this before moving to the next module — reading alone is not enough.

Open the Code Walkthrough below and run it locally. Change one parameter related to Router Pattern (e.g. model, temperature, top_k, or tool name), observe the difference in output, and write 2–3 sentences explaining what changed.

Highlighted lines show where Router Pattern happens in the code.

1route = router.invoke(f"Classify: {user_message}\nOptions: billing, technical, general")  # key line for Router Pattern2if route.confidence > 0.8:3    agent = specialists[route.intent]4else:5    agent = general_agent6response = await agent.run(user_message)

• Treating Router Pattern as a black box without evaluation
• Ignoring cost and latency in production
• Skipping error handling for router pattern

Quick recap — the most important points from this module.