Agent Coordination Patterns

With n agents, potential connections = n(n-1)/2. Careful design is essential.

Centralized for hierarchies, auction for markets, capability for specialists.

Poor allocation creates bottlenecks. Match tasks to agent capabilities.

Define clear policies for resource disputes before conflicts arise.

Priority-based, negotiation, arbitration, and locking each suit different scenarios.

Without proper sync, agents can corrupt shared state or miss critical updates.

Use barriers when all agents must complete a phase before moving forward.

Mutual exclusion prevents simultaneous writes to shared resources.

More coordination = better alignment but higher overhead.

Centralized is simple but fragile. Distributed scales but adds complexity.

Begin with basic coordination, expand only when needed.

Ambiguous protocols lead to miscoordination and failures.

Track communication costs, lock contention, and wait times.

Agent failures, network delays, and race conditions reveal hidden issues.

Coordination mechanisms that work for 3 agents may fail with 30.