Multi-Agent Patterns and When Not to Use Agents · ai-skills

Tools, Workflows and Agents · Beginner to Intermediate

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4lessons

A multi-agent setup splits one job across several model calls with different roles. The usual roles are a planner that decomposes the task, workers that execute the pieces, and a reviewer that checks the merged result.

Planner, worker and reviewer flow.

A planner splits the task, workers execute the pieces, and a reviewer checks the merged result.

Lesson	What it covers
Planner, Worker and Reviewer Patterns	Role splits, sequential and parallel patterns, and review gates.
Hand-off Cost and Error Compounding	Token and latency cost per hand-off, and chain success p^n with exact numbers.
Complexity and Debuggability	State growth, traceable runs, and containing the blast radius.
Script, Workflow or Agent	A decision table for script versus workflow versus agent, with worked costs.

Check yourself Two setups use steps that each succeed with probability 0.9. One chains 2 steps, the other 5. Which setup succeeds more often, and by how much?

The 2-step setup: 0.9^2 is 0.81 against 0.9^5 at 0.59049, a gap of about 0.22. Each extra step multiplies the total by another 0.9.

Up nextPlanner, Worker and Reviewer Patterns

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