Orchestration

Use this pattern when one workflow (the orchestrator) needs to fan out work to one or more worker workflows.

The orchestrator/worker pattern

• Orchestrator: decides what to do next, splits work into units, dispatches workers.
• Worker(s): do the concrete work (triage, code changes, analysis) with scoped permissions/tools.
• Optional monitoring: both orchestrator and workers can update a GitHub Project board for visibility.

Dispatch workers with dispatch-workflow

Allow dispatching specific workflows:

safe-outputs:
  dispatch-workflow:
    workflows: [repo-triage-worker, dependency-audit-worker]
    max: 10

During compilation, gh-aw validates the target workflows exist and support workflow_dispatch.

See dispatch-workflow safe output.

Passing correlation IDs

If your workers need shared context, pass an explicit input such as tracker_id (string) and include it in worker outputs (e.g., writing it into a Project custom field).

See also: Monitoring