The Case Against: Cognition's "Don't Build Multi-Agents"

This chapter explains Walden Yan's article "Don't Build Multi-Agents," written from Cognition, the team behind the Devin software engineering agent. Where Chapter 2 made the case for multi-agent systems, this article argues that for serious, long-running, reliable agents, you should usually avoid them. The two are not as contradictory as they sound, which Chapter 5 resolves, but first it is worth taking this argument on its own terms, because it is sharp and well reasoned.