How it works
Multi-agent systems define agents with specialised roles and tools. Communication happens via shared state, message passing, or A2A protocol in 2026. Orchestration patterns include hierarchical (manager-and-workers), sequential (pipeline), and free-form collaboration.
Example
A research agent system: a Manager agent decomposes a research question into sub-questions, dispatches them to Researcher agents (each scoped to a different source: web, internal docs, news), gathers responses, hands off to a Writer agent for synthesis.