Module IV — Single-Agent vs Multi-Agent

Status: outline. Lecture body not authored.

Central question:

When do we actually need another agent?

Recent literature shows that, under equal reasoning-token budgets, a single-agent system can outperform a multi-agent system on multi-hop reasoning tasks. That does not prove universal single-agent superiority.

Architectures

Supervisor / Workers · Planner / Executor · Planner / Implementer / Reviewer · Generator / Evaluator · Maker / Checker · Hierarchical · Peer-to-Peer · DAG · Blackboard · Swarm · Competitive ensemble.

Unique process — Agent Necessity Test

Before adding an agent, a justification must exist:

SPECIALIZATION
PARALLELISM
ISOLATION
VERIFICATION
FAULT TOLERANCE
CAPABILITY ACCESS

If none apply: keep Single-Agent.