Data Party THU

Sep 22, 2026 · Artificial Intelligence

Why Your Multi-Agent System Is Costlier, Slower, and Worse Than a Single Agent

The article analyzes why multi-agent systems often underperform single agents, identifying context isolation as the key benefit only when tasks exceed a single context window, detailing six architectural patterns, cost multipliers up to 15x tokens, and a decision framework for choosing between multi-agent and single-agent approaches with proper engineering practices.