Coopetition

A hybrid collaboration type where agents simultaneously cooperate on some dimensions while competing on others. Agents work together toward certain shared goals but pursue individual interests in other aspects of the same task.

The clearest examples appear in negotiation scenarios, where agents with different interests must reach mutually acceptable agreements, competing on terms while cooperating on process. Mixture-of-experts architectures also exhibit coopetition: expert models compete to contribute to outputs while collectively producing better results than any individual expert.

Coopetition acknowledges that real-world collaboration rarely falls neatly into pure cooperation or pure competition, most productive collaborations involve elements of both.

Related: 05-atom—collaboration-type-taxonomy