> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.orpheus.run/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Workers & Pools

> How Orpheus keeps your agents ready

<img className="block" src="https://mintcdn.com/orpheussysteminc/hc-RHMSh1-Rpu87T/assets/workers.svg?fit=max&auto=format&n=hc-RHMSh1-Rpu87T&q=85&s=5ef904aab000f312e0f6685052a24f84" alt="workers" width="21610" height="9354" data-path="assets/workers.svg" />

## What Are Workers?

Workers are long-lived processes that execute your agent code. Each agent has a pool of workers.

## How Workers Stay Warm

Unlike serverless (where containers die after each request), Orpheus workers:

1. Start when you deploy
2. Handle requests one at a time
3. Stay alive between requests
4. Only die when idle too long

This means no cold starts for subsequent requests.

## Worker Pool

Each agent has a pool with:

* `min_workers`: Always keep this many ready
* `max_workers`: Never exceed this many

```yaml theme={null}
scaling:
  min_workers: 1   # Always 1 warm
  max_workers: 10  # Scale up to 10
```

## Worker Lifecycle

```
Deploy → Create Pool → Spawn min_workers
                              ↓
Request → Queue → Worker picks up → Execute → Return to pool
                              ↓
Idle timeout → Remove worker (down to min_workers)
```

## Check Worker Status

```bash theme={null}
orpheus stats my-agent
```

Shows:

* `current`: How many workers running
* `healthy`: How many ready for requests
* `queue.depth`: Requests waiting

## When Workers Scale

* **Scale up:** Queue building up (more requests than workers can handle)
* **Scale down:** Workers idle (no requests for a while)

See [Autoscaling](/concepts/autoscaling) for details.