The org chart of a multi-agent system
Planner, architect, coder, reviewer: why agent topologies end up looking like the teams they replace — and what that means for governance.
Multi-agent systems converge on familiar shapes: a planner decomposes, specialists execute, a reviewer signs off.
Why it matters for governance
When the topology mirrors an org chart, accountability can too. Every agent gets a role charter: what it may read, what it may write, when it must escalate to a human.
Practical defaults
- One orchestrator, few specialists - resist the 12-agent demo
- Deterministic guardrails between every hop
- Human approval gates on irreversible actions
- Full trace per run, replayable