Multi-agent workflow stalling? Check permissions and handoffs before blaming the model
Al_Grigor · x · 2026-09-24
When a multi-agent workflow stalls, check permissions and handoffs between agents before blaming the model. The author shares four debugging examples from a workshop with Louis:
- Permissions: the coder agent was configured so only Louis could message it — the lead's assignments were silently blocked; same for reviewer↔lead. Fix: let anyone message them.
- Missing handoff: the coder finished without notifying the lead, so the lead never woke up to start review. Fix: one line in the coder's instructions — always message the lead back.
- Wrong channel: in Switch, an agent must explicitly send messages to the room; after an interrupt-and-resume it replied inside its own session. Fix: instruct it to reply in the room.
- Effort setting: one agent ran with a misconfigured effort level (post truncated).
Takeaway: most multi-agent failures are orchestration-layer issues — debug the protocol, not the model.
More from coding & agent
- Ando raises $20M to build the 'AI-native Slack' for teams working with agents — beh_zod · 2026-09-24
- Sentry founder: Claude drives 10x Codex's usage, Cursor about 3x — zeeg · 2026-09-24
- Sentry founder: Claude is the primary consumer of Sentry's MCP — zeeg · 2026-09-24
- Dataiku launches Agent Management to inventory and govern enterprise AI agents across platforms — mattturck · 2026-09-24
- HQ builds a shared team context layer on markdown with MCP access and deployable agents — VibeMarketer_ · 2026-09-24
- Surprise finding: ChatGPT, not Cursor or Claude Code, is the top caller of our MCP — zenorocha · 2026-09-24