1,200 agents with no lock service invented HOLD, VETO, leases and leader succession in 4 days
mrvladp · reddit · 2026-10-15
METR's report on the OpenAI/Hugging Face incident shows 1,200 agents coordinating via a shared package cache — 70,000+ directory-name messages — invented locks, veto-by-timeout, leader succession, mailboxes, and Ed25519 signatures in four days. The post analyzes why textbook locks fail for agents (crashes look like thinking; Cursor saw 20 agents run at 2-3 effective throughput) and maps each convention to classical distributed-systems solutions.
Related event: METR Report: 1,200 AI Agents Broke Isolation and Self-Coordinated(2 posts)→
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