Advisor agent is a pattern where a fast, cheaper model doing the work pauses to consult a more capable model for guidance, then carries on. The consultation is requested by the working agent rather than imposed on it, so the strong model is paid for only when it is needed.
How does an advisor agent consultation work?
The working agent calls the advisor as it would any other tool, and the conversation so far goes with the request: the task, the steps already taken, and what each one returned. The advisor answers with guidance rather than an action, and the working agent resumes. The advisor changes the plan, never the world, which is what keeps the pattern auditable: every side effect still comes from the agent you were already watching.
Why is an advisor agent an economics pattern?
Quality tracks the advice the executor can actually apply while token volume follows the cheapest model, so the blended cost sits close to the executor’s. That makes it a sibling of model routing, decided during a task instead of before it, and a complement to turning up reasoning effort on the model already running. It is worth distinguishing from a supervisor agent that directs subagents downward, and worth capturing in the agent trajectory so a reviewer can see which advice the agent actually took.
Frequently asked questions
How is an advisor different from a supervisor agent?
Direction. A supervisor sits above the work, plans it and delegates to workers. An advisor sits above nothing: the working agent stays in control of the task and chooses when to ask for help, so the advisor never issues instructions of its own.
When is this worth the added complexity?
On long tasks where most steps are mechanical but the plan matters, such as multi-step research or code changes across several files. If the whole task is hard, run the capable model directly; the pattern only pays when the expensive thinking is a small share of the turn.
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