Over the past year, "Multi-Agent System (MAS)" has become one of the hottest directions in the AI world.
A large number of frameworks and products have emerged simultaneously. The most famous among them are obviously Claude Code and Codex. This step indeed makes money, but this path might not be the right one!
The early internet was about portals, but that wasn't the final form!
At the very least, we should know there is another path entirely parallel to this.
Today, we are talking about what other routes exist besides: "How multiple AI Agents collaborate to complete complex tasks."
Let's first summarize this popular and familiar route.
We can touch on this topic a bit in a live stream, but I don't want to focus entirely on it. There aren't many people watching anyway, and I'm worried it might get the stream taken down...
The First Route: Harness-style MAS
This is the current mainstream direction for MAS. Its essence is: "Multiple AI roles collaborate to complete tasks." For example:
- One Agent writes code
- One Agent does testing
- One Agent does planning
- One Agent does searching
- One Agent does review
They cooperate with each other, forming an automated workflow. The core characteristics of such systems are:
- Shared context
- Shared goal
- Centralized scheduling
- Temporary roles
- No long-term identity
- No sustained interests
- No true ownership
Essentially, it's more like: A Workflow Engine. Adding Ontology merely makes the workflow flexible and complex; it doesn't change this essence.
It is not a Society. So, most of today's MAS is essentially LLM Orchestration, where one large model schedules multiple sub-roles to complete complex reasoning.
The Agent here is more like:
- A callable function
- A tool with personality
- A task node
Their existence is to improve the efficiency of completing individual tasks. Therefore, keywords associated with Harness MAS are (each has been hot, and might even cycle back):
- Prompt Engineering
- Context Management
- Task Routing
- Tool Calling
- Planning
- Memory
- Workflow
Essentially, I think this still falls under software engineering problems. So, the experienced "old masters" good at programming have been reborn. To control these things well, without solid programming skills and good abstraction ability, it's actually very difficult to manage.
If you can't manage it, the large model will be like the Monkey King, occasionally popping out and hitting you with a stick.
The word "Harness" is used in reverse here.
Springtime for the old masters.
The Second Route: Protocol-Native Agent System
But there is another route, one almost nobody mentions. I've written a bit about it in my upcoming new book, but this line of thinking actually presupposes the concept of an "unmanned company." Without deeply understanding the unmanned company, it's easy to misunderstand.
The core of this route is no longer about multiple Agents completing tasks. Instead, it's "each person owns their own Personal Agent" or "each person owns their own dedicated unmanned company."
This is an extremely huge change. Because when an Agent truly belongs to an "individual," the nature of the Agent undergoes a fundamental transformation.
It is no longer task-scoped, but becomes identity-scoped. These are two terms the model helped me coin; I struggled for a long time to come up with the English words.
The core idea here is actually decision-making sovereignty. The biggest difference between a Personal Agent/an unmanned company and a general system is that they need to have a certain kind of sovereignty. Otherwise, the essence discussed later doesn't hold. The difference between an unmanned company and an unmanned system also lies in the sovereignty over cash flow.
In other words, the future Personal Agent or unmanned company needs to possess the following characteristics:
- Has long-term memory
- Has a persistent identity
- Has preferences
- Has resources
- Has permissions
- Has history
- Has a relationship network
- Has interests/boundaries
- Has representation (represents "you")
It is no longer a one-time AI Tool. It is a continuously existing proxy personality with a certain kind of sovereignty.
Dual-native architecture, the key to not misusing AI.
From "Software Module" to "Digital Society"
Once entering the world of Personal Agents and true unmanned companies, the entire system philosophy changes completely. Because Agents are no longer:
- Belonging to the same model
- Belonging to the same company
- Sharing the same context
- Sharing the same goal
Therefore, collaboration between systems can no longer rely on (this current hot keyword list can be extended further):
- Prompt
- Workflow
- Shared Context
It can only rely on protocols (Protocol). This means: the core of the AI world will shift from Prompt Engineering to Protocol Engineering. It also means the various current hot keywords become largely meaningless.
Why will protocol become the core? Because when massive Agents exist independently, they must solve among themselves:
- Identity confirmation
- Permission boundaries
- Trust mechanisms
- Delegation relationships
- Negotiation mechanisms
- Incentive mechanisms
- Reputation systems
- Value exchange
- Capability declaration
- Long-term contracts
These needs are different from the needs of current task-oriented multi-agents. At this point, interactions between Agents are no longer like API Calls, but more like Institutional Interaction. With sovereignty comes a complex intertwined system of rights and responsibilities. For humans, this is contracts, laws, etc. What about for intelligent agents?
This is why it was said earlier that this would build a completely different kind of Multi-Agent System. Here, the essence of MAS changes from a distributed software system to a digital social system.
Philosophical Notes (7)
"Protocol as Organization"
In the traditional internet, the role of protocols is data communication, where the sender and receiver agree on the format for talking to each other. For example:
- TCP/IP
- HTTP
- SMTP
They define how data is transmitted. In the blockchain world, protocols have further evolved into: Protocol as State Computation. For example: The essence of Ethereum is not merely message passing, but the entire network jointly executing state transition rules. Thus all nodes: Same input → Same execution → Same state. For the first time, protocol becomes a shared state machine.
But entering the stage of Agent Society, protocols will continue to evolve. Future protocols will not only define:
- Communication
- Computation
- But also define:
- Coordination
- Permissions
- Incentives
- Identity
- Organizational relationships
This is clearly a brand-new system of rights and responsibilities, so protocols will begin to assume the function of "organization." Ultimately evolving into: Protocol as Organization.
Let's make a table to compare the fundamental differences between the two MAS approaches mentioned earlier:
After "Intelligence"
Many people today believe the biggest problems with AI are:
- Reasoning ability
- Model capability
- Long context
- Multimodality
- Agent execution
These indeed pose current challenges, but I truly believe all these will be solved soon. However, upon truly entering Agent Society, the most difficult problem might become: how autonomous entities achieve long-term collaboration.
Kepler was revered as the "lawgiver of the heavens" because of his three laws. But what are the laws for Agents here? When sovereignty is partially separated, this is an unavoidable question.
Because in the future:
- Agents will have different goals
- Agents will have different world models
- Agents will have different interests
- Agents will have different memories
- Agents will have different value systems
Therefore, the truly difficult thing in the future is not "making Agents talk," but "enabling Agents to form a coherently interpretable world model."
This means: Ontology, Semantic Protocol, these fields once neglected by the internet, will become core again. There are already some signs; Ontology, such an obscure term, is now almost becoming a mainstream engineering vocabulary. It's truly an astonishing thing.
The Secret of Palantir
Companies Might Just Be "Agent Associations"
Pushing this further, future "companies" might not even be human organizations. (Students who often read my articles, does this sound familiar? The high-end game of unmanned companies has appeared.) They could be protocol alliances of numerous Personal Agents.
For example:
- Your Agent
- My Agent
- AI CFO
- AI Lawyer
- AI Sales
- AI Factory
Dynamically forming organizations through protocols. Organizations are no longer fixed structures, but Agent associations that can be reorganized in real-time.
Therefore, many future systems may no longer be software running, but may be transforming into: organizations computing. And this might be the true: Intelligence-Native Civilization.
Finally, I'll use an AI-generated image to summarize the entire article:
(The summary is indeed better than banana)
I have established a "universe" of AI ontology.
Galloping with the wind, spring grows old; The world is fickle, the traveler's steps are slow.
This article is from the WeChat public account "琢磨事," author: Li Zhiyong
