How much agent-to-agent communication is actually necessary?
Measure when communication transfers essential context and when it becomes expensive coordination churn.
Starting point
Agent teams can consume enormous numbers of tokens. Anthropic’s own documentation notes that agent teams add coordination overhead and use significantly more tokens than a single session.
What to track
- Which handoffs require conversation rather than a durable record.
- How much context must move between planner, dispatcher, worker, and refinery.
- Whether shared Notes and Beads can replace repeated agent-to-agent explanation.
Living record
This page will collect communication-cost measurements and experiments in replacing chat with structured state.