In a hub-and-spoke multi-agent system, a subagent returns an error result. Which agent is responsible for deciding whether to retry the subagent, degrade gracefully, or surface the error to the user?
Answer: The coordinator, which owns recovery decisions and the user relationship
The coordinator owns all decisions about task routing, result aggregation, and failure recovery. A subagent's job is to execute one task and return a result — including an error result if the task fails. What to do with that error is the coordinator's decision. Adding a dedicated error agent adds indirection without value; prompting the user for recovery decisions is appropriate only when the error is user-facing and requires their input.