AI Systems Atlas

G-02Single Agent vs Multi-Agent

/coding-agents/single-vs-multi

One agent with full context and no coordination — or several specialists working in parallel, plus the overhead of keeping them coherent.

Key insight

Multi-agent buys wall-clock speed on cleanly-splittable work and nothing else. Coordination cost grows with coupling, and most features are more coupled than they look.

Failure mode

Splitting a coupled task: four agents each holding a quarter of the picture will confidently build four incompatible quarters.

Further reading
RelatedHierarchicalParallel swarmWorktrees

Elsewhere in the atlas

Harnesses →Security →Evals →Context →