Core Concepts

Understanding the key concepts in Parallax.

Agents

Agents are the workers in Parallax. Each agent is a process that:

• Registers with the control plane
• Declares its capabilities (what it can do)
• Receives tasks and returns results with confidence scores

const agent = new ParallaxAgent({
  name: 'my-agent',
  capabilities: ['analysis', 'summarization'],
});

Agents can wrap any AI model or service - OpenAI, Anthropic, local models, or custom logic.

Patterns

Patterns are declarative orchestration blueprints that define:

• What input to accept
• Which agents to use (by capabilities)
• How to execute (parallel, sequential, race)
• How to aggregate results (voting, consensus, merge)
• What output to produce

name: my-pattern
input:
  query: string
agents:
  capabilities: [analysis]
  min: 3
execution:
  strategy: parallel
aggregation:
  strategy: consensus
  threshold: 0.8
output:
  result: $consensus.result

Confidence Scores

Every agent response includes a confidence score (0.0 - 1.0) indicating how certain the agent is about its result. Parallax uses these scores for:

• Weighted voting - Higher confidence = more influence
• Quality gates - Filter out low-confidence responses
• Consensus building - Agreement thresholds

Execution Strategies

How agents receive and process tasks:

Strategy	Description	Use Case
Parallel	All agents work simultaneously	Speed, diverse perspectives
Sequential	Agents work in order, passing results	Pipelines, refinement
Race	First response wins	Latency-sensitive tasks

Aggregation Strategies

How results are combined:

Strategy	Description	Use Case
Voting	Majority/unanimous vote	Classification, yes/no decisions
Consensus	Build agreement with threshold	Complex analysis
Merge	Combine all results	Data extraction
First	Use first valid response	Fast responses

Control Plane

The control plane is the orchestration server that:

• Maintains agent registry
• Routes tasks to capable agents
• Executes patterns
• Aggregates results
• Tracks metrics and confidence

Primitives

Parallax provides 40+ primitives - building blocks for orchestration:

• Execution: parallel, sequential, race, delegate
• Aggregation: consensus, voting, merge, reduce
• Control: threshold, retry, fallback, timeout
• Logic: condition, switch, loop

These compose together to create sophisticated orchestration flows.

Next Steps

• Your First Pattern - Build something
• Agents Deep Dive - Learn more about agents
• Pattern Syntax - Master the YAML format