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Multi-Agent Orchestration

Supervisor/worker patterns, handoffs, shared state, and the cost math that decides whether N agents earn their keep

30 min read 6 views

A vendor-neutral treatment of multi-agent LLM systems: the supervisor/worker pattern, handoffs versus shared state, pipeline-vs-barrier synchronization for parallel fan-out, a worked cost-multiplication example, and the honest heuristic for when a single stronger model beats a fleet of coordinating agents. Cross-links `mcp-and-subagents` as the concrete Claude Code implementation and `plan-and-loop-modes` for the pipeline and adversarial-verification mechanics.

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Practice questions (5)

Single Agent or Five? Justifying the Architecture

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Designing the Handoff Between a Research Agent and a Writing Agent

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Pipeline or Barrier: Auditing 200 Config Files

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Debugging a Multi-Agent System That Costs 4x More Than Planned

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Blackboard vs. Isolated Workers for a Multi-Service Incident Investigation

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Quizzes (1)

Multi-Agent Orchestration Quiz

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