Agent Count Escalation
Make 'how many agents' a decision driven by evidence, and force a deliberate choice of coordination style at each step up, instead of jumping to multi-agent by reflex.
Description
Start with one agent. Add a second only when the first clearly fails the task and you can show it. When you do add agents, pick the coordination style on purpose: democratic, manager, hierarchical, or actor-critic. Do not reach for a swarm by reflex. Treat the number of agents as a dial you turn only when the evidence says to. Pair each step up with a coordination shape that fits the failure you saw.
When to apply
Use this when a team wants to design a multi-agent system before a single agent even exists, or when one agent has stopped improving and the next move is unclear. Don't apply it when the task is multi-actor by nature, such as negotiation, simulation, or debate as a feature. There the multi-agent shape is part of the requirement. Skip it too when you have no measurement of how the single agent fails, because then you have nothing to base a step up on.
What it involves
- Build and measure the single-agent baseline
- Identify the specific failure that escalation should fix
- Pick the coordination style
- Add the smallest number of agents that resolves the failure
- Re-measure against the same eval set
- Document the escalation as a decision record
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