Chapter 10: Multi-Agent Coordination & Failure Modes
How multiple agents reconcile disagreements (debate, chairperson moderation), the characteristic failure modes of agentic systems (cascading tool failures, role drift, infinite handoff), and the orchestration patterns that mitigate them.
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Chapter Overview
Multi-agent systems amplify both the power and the failure modes of single agents. A debate of three agents converges on better answers than a solo agent — when it converges. When it doesn't, you get unbounded loops, role drift, and a frustrating user-facing experience. This chapter is the practical how-to: how to coordinate multi-agent teams, how to detect and recover from cascading failures, and which orchestration patterns are robust enough for production.
This chapter covers:
- Multi-agent debate — multiple agents argue, a judge picks the consensus
- Chairperson & moderation — explicit role for an arbiter agent
- Failure modes of agentic systems — the taxonomy of what goes wrong
- Cascading tool failures — how a single bad observation poisons N downstream steps
- Orchestration patterns for coordination — circuit breakers, deadlines, fallback chains
Chapter Roadmap
Click any topic to jump in
Multi-Agent Debate
N agents critique each other across rounds. 5–15pp accuracy gain on problems with knowledge but weak commitment.
Chairperson
Explicit moderator role — picks speakers, declares consensus, terminates the discussion.
Failure Modes
Spec drift, tool misuse, hallucinated tools, infinite loops, premature termination — and the multi-agent extras.
Cascading Failures
How one bad observation poisons N downstream steps. Circuit breakers contain the blast radius.
Orchestration Patterns
Step budgets, deadlines, fallback chains, idempotency keys — the production hardening that makes coordination safe.
Multi-Agent Debate
Chairperson & Moderation
Failure Modes of Agentic Systems
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