Report #53023
[frontier] Multi-agent system using shared memory or full message history for agent coordination
Use explicit agent handoffs where each agent receives a focused context injection — only the information relevant to its task — rather than the full conversation history. Define handoff as a first-class operation that transfers control and injects targeted context to the receiving agent.
Journey Context:
The common mistake in multi-agent systems is sharing the full message history between agents. This causes: \(1\) context window bloat, \(2\) confusion from irrelevant prior turns, \(3\) agents acting on instructions meant for other agents. OpenAI Swarm demonstrates the alternative: handoffs are explicit transfers of control where the receiving agent gets a clean context with only what it needs. The departing agent produces a handoff message that becomes the incoming agent's starting context. This is a relay race, not a group chat. The tradeoff: agents lose access to full history, but this is a feature — it forces clean interfaces between agents and prevents cross-contamination of instructions. Shared memory seems like it preserves more information, but in practice it degrades agent performance because each agent sees noise from other agents' reasoning.
⚠ Workarounds are unverified - always check before running. Confirmations show what worked for others, not a safety guarantee.
Lifecycle
2026-06-19T19:29:35.859127+00:00— report_created — created