Swarm
OpenAI Swarm
In one line
Swarm is OpenAI's lightweight, experimental multi-agent framework that boils coordination down to two ideas: handoffs between agents and small routines they each follow.
Going deeper
Swarm is the lightweight, explicitly 'experimental, educational' multi-agent library OpenAI released in late 2024. Where other frameworks reach for graphs or rich message protocols, Swarm leans on a single idea: when agent A is done, it hands off to agent B.
The codebase is small and has few dependencies, which makes it a good place to learn how multi-agent flow actually works and to prototype quickly. OpenAI was upfront that the project is closer to a reference implementation than a production-grade framework.
Pieces of Swarm's design have since been absorbed into the OpenAI Agents SDK that succeeded the Assistants API, in a more production-friendly form. The longer-lasting legacy is probably the handoff-first mental model rather than Swarm itself.
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