agent-role-design

Agent Role Design

In a multi-agent system, each agent needs a clearly defined role — what it does, what it knows, what it's responsible for, and where its authority ends. Without clear roles, agents duplicate work, conflict with each other, or leave gaps.

Defining an Agent Role

For each agent in the system, specify:

• Purpose: What is this agent for? One sentence describing its reason to exist.
• Capabilities: What can this agent do? List specific actions and outputs.
• Knowledge scope: What does this agent know about? What domains, data, and context does it have access to?
• Authority: What decisions can this agent make autonomously? What requires approval?
• Boundaries: What is explicitly outside this agent's scope? Where does it stop and hand off?
• Success criteria: How do you know this agent is doing its job well?

Role Design Principles

• Single responsibility: Each agent should have one clear purpose. If you need a paragraph to explain what it does, it's doing too much.
• Clear boundaries: The line between one agent's scope and another's should be unambiguous. No overlapping authority without explicit conflict resolution.
• Minimal coupling: Agents should be able to do their work with minimal dependencies on other agents. Share results, not process.
• Appropriate autonomy: The level of autonomous decision-making should match the stakes and the agent's reliability in that domain.

Role Patterns

• Specialist: Deep expertise in one domain. Handles all tasks of a specific type.
• Router: Doesn't do work itself but directs tasks to the right specialist.
• Orchestrator: Manages the overall workflow, coordinates between specialists.
• Validator: Reviews other agents' outputs for quality, safety, or compliance.
• Fallback: Handles cases that other agents can't or won't.

Role Conflicts

When agents' roles overlap or conflict:

• Priority rules: When two agents could handle a task, which one gets it?
• Escalation paths: When agents disagree, who decides?
• Shared resources: When agents need the same data or tools, how is access managed?
• Feedback loops: How do agents inform each other about what they've done?

Design Artefacts

• Agent role cards (one per agent with all specifications)
• Role boundary map showing where each agent's authority starts and stops
• Interaction matrix showing which agents communicate with which
• Authority hierarchy diagram
• Role conflict resolution rules