Multi-Agent Systems Are Distributed Systems. Start Treating Them That Way (opens in new tab)

The demo looked perfect\. A planning agent broke the task into steps\. A coding agent wrote the implementation\. A testing agent checked the result\. A documentation agent wrote the final notes\. Four agents, one smooth workflow, no human handoff\. The demo looked exactly like the future everyone had been promised\. Everyone in the room nodded\. Ship it\. Three weeks into production, the same system did not crash\. It simply stopped moving\. The planner was waiting for code\. The coding agent...