Multi-Step Orchestration

Recipes & Workflows

Declarative multi-step agent coordination with approval gates, loops, and automatic checkpointing

Active

February 2026

The Problem

Why recipes exist

Manual Orchestration

Complex workflows involve multiple agents in sequence. Coordinating them by hand is error-prone and tedious.

No Repeatability

You run the same multi-step workflow repeatedly. Without a definition, each run varies. Encoding it as YAML makes it consistent and versioned.

Lost Progress

Long-running work gets interrupted. Without checkpointing, you start over. Recipes resume exactly where they stopped.

Anatomy

Declarative YAML workflows

name: code-review-workflow
description: Review code and deploy on approval

steps:
  - id: analyze
    agent: foundation:explorer
    output: analysis
    prompt: "Analyze changes in {{file_path}}"

  - id: review
    agent: foundation:zen-architect
    output: review_result
    prompt: "Review code quality: {{analysis}}"

  - id: approve
    type: approval_gate
    message: "Review complete. Deploy?"

  - id: deploy
    type: bash
    command: "deploy.sh {{file_path}}"

Capabilities

Core features

Context Accumulation

Each step's output field becomes a named variable. Reference it in later steps with {{variable}} syntax. Context flows forward automatically.

Approval Gates

Pause execution for human review at critical checkpoints. The workflow waits until you approve or deny before proceeding.

Automatic Checkpointing

Every step completion is persisted. If a workflow is interrupted, resume it later with all previous results intact.

Advanced

Powerful patterns

Foreach + Parallel

Iterate over collections with foreach. Add parallel: N to process N items concurrently. Ideal for multi-file analysis.

While / Convergence

Loop with while_condition until a quality threshold is met. Set max_iterations as a safety bound.

Conditional Execution

Skip steps based on conditions. Route workflows dynamically: skip deep validation for clean code, escalate critical findings.

Human-in-Loop

Approval checkpoints

Agent: Analyze

↓

Agent: Review

↓

⏸ Approval Gate

↓ human approves

Bash: Deploy

            Critical checkpoints. Review before deployment, approve before destructive operations, inspect results before committing. Staged recipes group steps into phases with approval between each stage.
        

Fault Tolerance

Resume where you left off

# Recipe interrupted at step 3? Resume it:
amplifier run "resume recipe session recipe_20260121_abc123"

# Or list all active sessions:
amplifier run "list recipe sessions"

# All previous step results preserved
# Context accumulation intact
# Picks up at the exact step that was interrupted

            Long-running workflows. Close your laptop, go to a meeting, come back and resume. The recipe engine checkpoints after every step completion.
        

Velocity

Built in 44 days

74

Commits

10,156

Lines of Python

46

Example recipes

Dec 15, 2025 – Jan 28, 2026 · 5 contributors · Brian Krabach: 68 of 74 commits (~92%)

Sources

Research Methodology

Data as of: February 20, 2026

Feature status: Active

Repository: microsoft/amplifier-bundle-recipes

Research performed:

Commit count: git log --oneline | wc -l → 74 commits
Contributors: git log --format="%an" | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn → 5 contributors
Example count: find . -name "*.yaml" -path "*/examples/*" | wc -l → 46 files
Total YAML: find . -name "*.yaml" | wc -l → 51 files
Engine size: find modules -name "*.py" | xargs wc -l → 10,156 lines
Timeline: git log --reverse --format="%ai" | head -1 → first commit Dec 15, 2025
Features: grep -rn "foreach\|while_condition\|approval\|staged" → confirmed in engine and examples

Primary contributor: Brian Krabach (68 of 74 commits, ~92%)

Other contributors: Marc Goodner (3), Mollie Munoz (1), Sam Schillace (1), momuno (1)

Gaps: No performance benchmarks available. No usage telemetry. Impact claims are qualitative.

Automate your workflows

Declarative, resumable, repeatable

Create recipes: Use the recipe-author agent — don't write YAML directly

Examples: 46 templates in amplifier-bundle-recipes/examples/

Run a recipe: amplifier run "execute @recipes:examples/code-review-recipe.yaml"