Outer-Inner Agent Loop

Problem

A single agent loop that conflates planning and acting (such as ReAct) does both on every turn and pays the cost of replanning at each step even when the plan is still valid. Plan-and-Execute fixes the plan up front but then runs the executor blind — by the time execution finishes, the planner has no chance to react to mid-run evidence except by abandoning the run. The team needs planning and execution on separate cadences, with a controlled channel by which execution evidence can interrupt the plan.

Solution

Define two roles. Outer agent (Dispatcher + Planner): decomposes the goal into subtasks with milestones, dispatches each to the inner agent, and may interrupt to replan when milestones are missed or new evidence arrives. Inner agent (Actor): runs a tool-use loop on a single subtask, reports back a structured result. Outer holds the global state; inner holds the local state. The interruption channel is the only path the outer has into the inner's loop.

When to use

• Goals decompose into subtasks where global planning and local action have different cadences.
• An outer planner needs an interruption channel to replan based on inner-loop evidence.
• Global state and local state can be cleanly separated between the two loops.