Multi-Agent Systems: When One Agent Isn't Enough

Single-agent systems work for bounded tasks: answer a question, draft an email, classify a document. Multi-agent orchestration becomes necessary when a task spans departments, requires sequential decisions, or involves tools that a single agent can't access.

The pattern we use most is a coordinator agent that decomposes the request, routes sub-tasks to specialist agents (billing, logistics, compliance), and an evaluator agent that checks outputs before delivery. A human gatekeeper sits at the final approval step for high-stakes workflows.

Shared memory between agents is the hard part. Without a common context layer, each agent operates in isolation and the coordinator can't synthesize a coherent response. We typically use a lightweight state store — not a full knowledge graph — scoped to the current task.