Cognition says multi-agent systems work when only one agent writes
Original titleMulti-Agents: What's Actually Working
Cognition reports that multi-agent setups work best when writes stay single-threaded and extra agents contribute intelligence instead of actions.
It describes a code-review loop where a clean-context review agent catches bugs in Devin-written PRs, averaging 2 bugs per PR with roughly 58% severe.
The post also says the smart-friend pattern, pairing a smaller primary model with a stronger one, has not yet worked well with asymmetrically weaker primaries and is an open training problem.
The post gives concrete findings on which multi-agent setups work, including clean-context code review and smart-friend escalation, and where they still fail.
Source: Cognition Blog (Devin, Windsurf) · cognition.com