Agent Systems · core
Multi-agent Coordination
Delegation, specialization, shared state, handoffs, arbitration, budgets, and avoiding coordination overhead.
Mental model
Multiple agents help when work decomposes cleanly and results can be verified independently. Shared goals, bounded tasks, explicit handoffs, and conflict resolution matter more than agent count.
How to study Multi-agent Coordination
Begin by restating the mental model in your own words, then connect it to a concrete system you have built or operated. Name the mechanism, the constraint it addresses, and the trade-off it introduces. Use AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications to check details, but close the source before writing your explanation. Retrieval is the learning step; rereading is only preparation.
Next, compare Multi-agent Coordination with MCP & Integrations, Agent Communication & Interfaces. Ask what changes in correctness, latency, resource use, operability, and failure recovery. Complete Design exercise: Multi-agent Coordination and preserve the command, input, output, and one failed attempt as evidence. Finish by explaining the idea without jargon to someone who has not studied the track.
Proof of understanding
- Explain the mechanism from first principles and identify the state it reads or changes.
- Give one situation where the concept is the right choice and one where it is not.
- Predict a realistic failure mode before running the drill, then compare the prediction with evidence.
- Connect the result to a roadmap or build artifact instead of treating the concept as isolated trivia.
Learn from primary sources
Practice and explain it back
Design exercise: Multi-agent Coordination
Delegation, specialization, shared state, handoffs, arbitration, budgets, and avoiding coordination overhead. Implement designOutline() returning non-empty values for: taskDecomposition, sharedState, conflictResolution. Each value must name a concrete mechanism or decision.
Expected evidence: A design outline with taskDecomposition, sharedState, conflictResolution plus an explicit failure mode or trade-off.
Open the interactive drill →Review prompts
- When does splitting work across agents make results worse rather than better?
Build evidence
Synthesize: Agent Systems
Engineer useful agents with bounded loops, tools, memory, protocols, durability, permissions, and long-running control. Produce one working system, benchmark, or evidence-backed design that integrates the path.
- Implements or precisely models the core mechanisms from all three milestones
- Includes at least one injected failure or adversarial case and demonstrates recovery
- Reports quality, latency, resource, reliability, or usability measurements relevant to the domain
- Ships a concise architecture note explaining decisions, trade-offs, and remaining risks