Three Strategies for Agent Collaboration

How agents decide to interact falls into three strategic categories:

Rule-based: Interactions governed by predefined rules. Agents coordinate according to system-wide constraints. High predictability and efficiency, but limited adaptability to novel situations. Works well for consensus-seeking and structured workflows.

Role-based: Each agent operates according to a specialized role with segmented objectives. Agents act like team members with distinct job descriptions. Enables modularity and leverages agent expertise, but creates rigid structures and dependencies. Works well for software development or assembly-line processes.

Model-based: Agents make probabilistic decisions based on their understanding of the environment, other agents’ likely states, and shared goals. Supports adaptation to uncertainty but requires complex models and is computationally expensive. Works well for game environments and robotics.

The choice depends on how dynamic the environment is and how much agent autonomy is needed.

Related: 05-atom—collaboration-type-taxonomy, 05-atom—theory-of-mind-in-mas