Swarm vs. Workflow: Which to Use

Bothive gives you two ways to coordinate multiple bots. They overlap, but they're built for different jobs.

A Swarm — implicit collaboration

A Swarm is a team of bots defined in HiveLang. A coordinator delegates to specialist agents, which can themselves use tools and memory. You describe roles; the runtime handles the hand-offs.

hivelang
swarm ResearchSwarm {
  agent Searcher {
    role: "Finds reliable information online"
    capabilities { web.search }
  }
  agent Summarizer {
    role: "Condenses findings into key points"
    capabilities { ai.generate }
  }

  on user.message {
    findings = delegate to Searcher with { task: input }
    summary  = delegate to Summarizer with { task: findings }
    respond with summary
  }
}

Reach for a Swarm when the task is conversational or open-ended and you want agents to figure out the collaboration.

A Workflow — explicit orchestration

A Workflow is a visual graph in the Orchestrator. You place nodes (triggers, bots, AI, logic, apps) and wire the exact order and branching. A bot dropped in as a Bot node runs as its full self — so a workflow can contain swarms.

Reach for a Workflow when you need explicit control: a fixed sequence, branching on conditions, loops, schedules, or webhooks.

Rule of thumb

• Swarm: "Have a research team answer this." (implicit, in HiveLang)
• Workflow: "On a schedule, score the lead; if hot, alert Slack; else log it." (explicit, visual)

You can mix them: build specialist bots/swarms, then orchestrate them in a workflow.

Next steps

• Building Your First Swarm
• Build & schedule workflows