Every multi-agent system that survived 2026 has phase gates, shared artifacts, or a final supervisor

Micheal Lanham (Medium)·medium signal

A retrospective on what actually shipped found that surviving collaboration systems all share one of three coordination anchors: explicit phase gates, shared artifacts both agents read/write, or a final supervisor that reconciles output. Free-for-all 'swarm' chatter without one of these consistently degraded. Reserve multi-agent debate / maker-checker loops for the cases where accuracy genuinely matters (verification), and give any handoff a concrete artifact to pass rather than a conversation to continue.