# Goal Decomposition

> Decompose a goal into sub-goals recursively until each leaf is directly actionable.

- **Category**: Agentic AI
- **Subcategory**: Planning & Control Flow
- **Canonical URL**: https://designpattern.fyi/patterns/goal_decomposition/

---

## Description
**Intent**: Decompose a goal into sub-goals recursively until each leaf is directly actionable.
**Context**: A team gives an agent a goal that is too large to act on in a single step — renew all cloud contracts before the next quarter, prepare a release across half a dozen repositories, plan a multi-week research investigation. The work decomposes naturally into sub-goals, and those sub-goals decompose further, until eventually each leaf is something the agent can actually do (send an email, run a query, edit one file).
**Solution**: - Build a tree of goals. The root is the user's top-level goal. - Each non-leaf goal decomposes into sub-goals that together achieve the parent. - Leaves are directly actionable single steps the agent can execute immediately. - Monitor progress at each level; surface stuck branches explicitly. - Allow parallel sibling goals (distinct from sequential least-to-most).


## Use Cases
- Goals are large enough that a single-shot attempt produces shallow work.
- Sub-goals can be expressed in a tree where each leaf is directly actionable.
- Parallel sibling goals exist and you want to track stuck branches explicitly.





## Trade-offs


### Advantages

- Long-horizon tasks become tractable with clear structure.

- Progress is visible at multiple granularities simultaneously.




### Considerations & Drawbacks

- Tree construction is itself work that costs tokens and time.

- Stuck branches at deep levels are easy to lose without explicit monitoring.







---
**Reference**: [Original Source](https://www.agentpatternscatalog.org/patterns/goal-decomposition/)