AI Orchestrator won’t delegate to AI Agent Tools (even after renaming tools & adding $fromAI) — need guidance + best-practice prompts

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Describe the problem/error/question

I’m building a conversational Orchestrator (GPT-4.1/4o-mini) that should silently delegate to four AI Agent Tool sub-agents (Search Setup, Detail Filters & Selection, CRM, Presentation).

Conversation quality is OK, but the orchestrator does not call the sub-agents. With Return Intermediate Steps enabled I don’t see tool calls; it just chats back to the user that is going to do something but doesn’t execute anything.

What I’ve already tried (and what changed):

  • Tool names: Renamed every tool/node to match ^[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+$ (e.g., BlockA_SearchSetup, BlockB_DetailFilters_Selection, etc.). This fixed the initial validation error.

  • Arguments: In each AI Agent Tool prompt I inject inputs using $fromAI(...) so the tool receives user_message/state (and optionally user_selection_ids).

  • Orchestrator prompt: Updated to explicitly say it MAY CALL those tools silently and to pass the exact argument names.

  • Despite this, delegation still doesn’t happen. If there’s up-to-date guidance or best-practice prompt patterns for the AI Agent Tool and Orchestrator combo, I’d really appreciate it.

Please share your workflow

Share the output returned by the last node

  • From a cold start with input “hola” the Orchestrator replies in Spanish (greeting + question), but no tool calls show up in Intermediate Steps.

  • When asking “Quiero comprar un departamento en Coquimbo”, same behavior: chat reply only; still no delegation.

(Expected behavior: Orchestrator silently calls BlockA_SearchSetup(user_message, state); the tool receives those via $fromAI, returns JSON to its Structured Output Parser; then the Orchestrator continues.)

Information on your n8n setup

  • n8n version: 1.107.3
  • Database (default: SQLite):
  • n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main):
  • Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app): desktop app
  • Operating system:
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