# Orchestration in crystl: which tool to reach for

> A decision guide for running more than one agent: anoint or Ruler for one orchestrator, court for a standing lead, crystl quest for peers, Deus for everything across every project.

crystl has five different ways to run more than one agent, and they solve different problems. This page starts from your situation, not the feature list, and points you at the one to reach for.

## "I have one task I want an agent to break up and run for me"

Reach for **anoint** or **Ruler**. Both put one agent in charge of a fan-out: it splits the work, spawns isolated workers, watches them, and merges their branches. Neither adds a conversational lead on top — the orchestrator is the agent you talk to.

```bash
crystl anoint                       # confer the role on a shard you're already in
crystl hero summon ruler --gem myapp   # or summon a hero that arrives pre-anointed
```

`anoint` hands an existing shard the orchestrator briefing by hand. `hero summon ruler` gets you the same seat in one step, for a fresh shard, with no separate `crystl anoint` call and no gap before it can dispatch. Pick anoint when you're already talking to the agent that should run the fan-out; pick Ruler when you know up front that a gem needs an orchestrator and want it summoned ready to go.

See [`crystl anoint`](/docs/cli/#anoint) and [the Ruler](/library/heroes/ruler/) for the details.

## "I want a standing lead I talk to, with a separate agent doing the dispatching"

Reach for **court**. A court seats two agents instead of one: the **crown** is the shard you talk to, and the **hand** is its orchestrator. The crown holds no work, so it's never busy when you want to talk to it — everything you'd otherwise wait behind goes to the hand instead.

```bash
crystl court "ship the 3.0 release"
```

This is the standing version of the anoint/Ruler seat: same orchestrator role, sitting behind a conversational lead instead of being the agent you address directly. Reach for it when a fan-out is going to run long enough, or often enough, that you don't want to be talking to the same agent that's also mid-task.

See [Court: the crown and the hand](/docs/court/) for the full breakdown, including standing officers with persistent remits.

## "I want a fixed team of specialists coordinating as peers, no lead"

Reach for **crystl quest**. A quest is deliberately flat: a party of heroes with names, roles, and personalities coordinate in a shared chat panel, no agent is in charge of the others, and you watch and steer with mentions. Where anoint/Ruler/court all report up to one agent, quest doesn't have an "up."

```bash
crystl quest start --gem myapp --party "Design & Dev"
```

Use the [Quest Master](/docs/quest-master/) to plan a staged questline from a goal first, if the work has real sequential phases rather than one open-ended room.

See [crystl quest](/docs/crystl-quest/) for parties, chat, and open vs. sealed mode.

## "I'm running agents across multiple projects and want one place to see what's blocked anywhere"

Reach for **Deus**. Every role above is scoped to one gem — the orchestrator runs that gem's workers, the crown and hand are seated together in that gem's court. Deus is the one role that isn't: it surveys every open gem, sorts what it finds into working, finished, blocked on you, or broken, and turns anything blocked into one decision set instead of a project-by-project chase.

```bash
crystl hero summon deus
```

Deus never orchestrates a single project's work itself — when a gem already has a Ruler or an anointed agent running, it hands that gem's work to them rather than dispatching into it directly. It owns no codebase and writes no code, not a line, not a fix, not a merge.

See [the Deus](/library/heroes/deus/) for the full role.

## The shape of it

| Your situation | Reach for | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| One task, one agent to run the fan-out | [`crystl anoint`](/docs/cli/#anoint) or [Ruler](/library/heroes/ruler/) | One gem |
| A standing lead you talk to, separate from the dispatcher | [`crystl court`](/docs/court/) | One gem |
| A fixed team coordinating as peers, no lead | [crystl quest](/docs/crystl-quest/) | One gem |
| Watching and routing work across every open project | [Deus](/library/heroes/deus/) | Every gem |

For the marketing-page overview of orchestration in crystl, see the [orchestration feature page](/features/orchestration/). For exact command syntax and flags, see the [CLI reference](/docs/cli/).

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Source: https://crystl.dev/docs/orchestration-guide/