VI · Multi-AgentEmerging★

Inner Committee

also known as Multi-Persona Single Model, Self-as-Multiple-Roles

Run one model under several distinct personas (executor, critic, planner) within a single agent loop.

This pattern helps complete certain larger patterns —

  • specialisesSelf-Modification Diff Gate·— Gate the agent's edits to its own code or rules through a separate critic persona that reviews the diff before it lands.

Context

A team is running a single agent on a task where planning, executing, and critiquing the result all matter — a coding agent that should think through a change, write the patch, and then check the patch against the requirements. Standing up two or three separate agents with their own model instances is more machinery than the task needs, but doing all three roles in one prompt is producing muddled output.

Problem

When one prompt is asked to plan, execute, and self-critique at the same time, the model conflates the roles and emits something that is partly a plan, partly an attempt, and partly a half-hearted critique that mostly agrees with the attempt. The plan never gets sharp, the execution never gets focused, and the critique never seriously challenges anything. Without explicit role separation, the team gets the cost of a complex agent and the quality of a confused one.

Forces

  • Persona switching costs a prompt and a context reset.
  • The model has the same blind spots in each persona; true diversity is limited.
  • Persona drift in long conversations dilutes the role separation.

Example

A coding agent that handles refactor requests keeps producing patches that compile but miss the actual intent, because one prompt is being asked to plan, write, and self-critique in the same breath. The team rebuilds it as an inner-committee: the same model is invoked as Planner (sees the request and codebase summary), Executor (sees only the plan and writes the diff), and Critic (sees only the diff and the acceptance criteria). The personas run in fixed order and each sees only what its role needs.

Diagram

Solution

Therefore:

Define explicit personas (system prompts) for each role: planner, executor, critic. The agent loop steps through personas at fixed points. Each persona sees only the inputs its role needs, not the full context of the others.

What this pattern forbids. Each persona may only act within its declared role; cross-persona reasoning is forbidden in a single prompt.

And the patterns that stand alongside it, or against it —

  • alternative-toDebate·— Have multiple agents argue different positions on a question and converge through structured exchange.
  • alternative-toRole Assignment★★— Assign each agent a named role (researcher, writer, critic, planner) with a role-specific prompt, tool palette, and acceptance criteria.
  • alternative-toCognitive-Move Selector·— Restrict idle-tick cognition to a small agent-vetted menu of named cognitive moves so the next thought has a determinate shape rather than free-form drift.
  • alternative-toParallel-Voice Proposer·— Generate several candidate thoughts in parallel under named voices and have the same model pick the canonical one, logging the losers as audit.
  • alternative-toPersonality Variant Overlay·— Let one agent speak in several named voices that overlay the base identity rather than replacing it, so the agent can shift register without losing identity continuity or splitting into separate personas.
  • alternative-toHeterogeneous-Model Council with Synthesis Judge★— Three or more role-specialized personas run on different model architectures in parallel; a synthesis judge — given only their structured JSON, not the original input — produces the final verdict.
  • complementsAgent Persona Profile★— Treat agent identity as a structured profile object — persona, primary motivator, allowed actions, knowledge bindings — rather than a free-form role sentence in the system prompt.

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Used in frameworks

References

Provenance