Lesson 165 · 3 min
AI teams: agents that hand work to each other
In a multi-agent setup, one AI plans the job and hands pieces to helper agents, each with its own instructions and tools.
One agent doing a big job can get lost: its context fills up with notes, and it forgets what it was doing. A common fix is to split the work into a team.
Usually there is a lead agent that reads the goal and breaks it into parts. It sends each part to a helper agent with a short brief, such as "find prices from these three suppliers" or "check this draft for errors". Helpers work separately, sometimes at the same time, and report back.
Helpers can be specialised. A research helper may only have search tools. A writer has no tools at all. A checker is told to look for problems and nothing else. Keeping each one focused makes their work easier to follow.
The lead then combines the reports into one result. Teams can finish big jobs faster, and they also use more AI time, so they cost more. For a small task, one assistant is usually enough.
Do it now
Plan a team on paper
- 1. Pick a bigger task, like planning a family trip or a small event.
- 2. Use the prompt below to have an AI split it into helper roles.
- 3. Ask yourself which parts really need separate helpers and which do not.
I want to [BIG TASK]. Design a small team of AI helpers for it: a lead plus at most four helpers. For each helper, give a one-line brief, the tools it needs, and what it must hand back to the lead.
Quick check
Keep going
Next →When AI teams failWords from this lesson
- Agent
- An AI system that takes several steps on its own, such as searching, clicking or using apps, to finish a goal you set.
- Tool use
- An AI's ability to call outside tools, such as a calculator, web search or calendar, to do things it cannot do alone.
- Context window
- The maximum amount of text an AI can look at in one go. Anything beyond it is forgotten for that conversation.
- Prompt chaining
- Breaking a big job into a sequence of smaller prompts, feeding each answer into the next step.