The Orchestration Margin Curve: Why Agent Chains Reprice Agency Delivery Before They Replace It

Multi-agent orchestration changes agency economics at the handoff, not at the model. Every manual step between extraction, generation, and compliance review carries a billable hour and a queue delay, so chaining specialized agents compresses project timelines 40 to 60 percent while leaving the retainer intact. The catch is that reliability is now a delivery cost: fallback logic, evaluation runs, and monitoring must be priced in before orchestration is sold as turnkey.