Question 1

Why did multi-agent inquiries spike so much recently if most tasks don't need it?

Accepted Answer

Interest and fit are different things. Teams are right to investigate whether multi-agent architectures apply to them — the mistake is skipping the fit check and defaulting to multiple agents because the pattern is popular, rather than because the task actually decomposes that way.

Question 2

What's the real cost of adding agents we don't need?

Accepted Answer

Coordination overhead: message passing between agents, redundant context, harder debugging when a failure could have originated in any of several agents, and governance work — most teams running multi-agent systems today still can't fully audit what each agent did.

Question 3

We already have one agent. When does it make sense to split it into several?

Accepted Answer

When that one agent is straining under too much context or too many tools, or when distinct parts of its job need genuinely different skills, models, or failure handling. Splitting for organizational tidiness, without one of those pressures, usually just adds coordination cost.

Question 4

Does a low score mean multi-agent systems are never worth it?

Accepted Answer

No — it means this specific task doesn't need one right now. A task that starts single-agent can grow into genuinely separable sub-tasks as scope expands, and the right architecture can shift accordingly. Reassess when the shape of the work changes.

Question 5

What does 'governance readiness' actually require before running multiple agents?

Accepted Answer

Per-agent tracing so you can tell which agent did what, clear ownership boundaries between agents, and a way to catch one agent's bad output before it propagates to another. Without that, adding agents multiplies your blind spots instead of your capability.

Multi-Agent Fit Assessment

Can the work be cleanly split into independent sub-tasks with different specializations?

About the Assessment