---
title: "Hierarchical Decomposition · agent topology · Agent Fieldbook"
url: https://agentfieldbook.org/design/topologies/hierarchical-decomp/
description: "A planner recursively spawns sub-planners and workers: open-ended task breakdown where scope is unknown upfront."
section: "Design · Topologies"
source: Agent Fieldbook — generated from the published page
---

# Hierarchical Decomposition

A planner recursively spawns sub-planners and workers: open-ended task breakdown where scope is unknown upfront.

A hierarchical-decomposition agent breaks an open-ended goal into sub-goals, spawning sub-planners that break those down further, recursively, until the leaves are small enough for workers to execute. Unlike a flat hub-spoke, the tree deepens as the problem demands, so it handles tasks whose scope is not known up front. It suits large, open-ended objectives where the decomposition itself is part of the work. In anatomy terms it is a planner core that recursively spawns planner and worker cores in a tree.

## In the anatomy

A top planner core decomposes the goal and spawns sub-planner cores, which recurse until leaf worker cores execute; results flow back up the tree; the perimeter gates each level's writes.

## At a glance

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Pattern | Hierarchical Decomposition |
| State model | session |

## Common use cases

## Strengths

## Weaknesses

## Basis

Description, use cases and trade-offs: Field Book analysis, synthesised from established agent-architecture literature.