· AI Agents · 2 min read
Multi-Agent Patterns: Router vs. Swarm Architectures
Should your agents have a boss or work as a flat hierarchy? We compare the Router pattern against the Swarm approach for complex enterprise workflows.
Building a single agent is easy. Orchestrating a team of agents is an architectural challenge. Just like human teams, the structure determines the output.
There are two dominant patterns emerging in modern AI engineering: the Router (Hub-and-Spoke) and the Swarm.
The Router Pattern (Hub-and-Spoke)
In this model, a central “Brain” (typically a high-reasoning model like GPT-4 or Claude Opus) acts as the manager.
- Flow: User Request -> Router -> Specialist Agent (Coder / Analyst / Writer).
- Pros: Strict control. The manager ensures the task is understood before delegating. It is deterministic and easier to debug.
- Cons: The Router becomes a bottleneck. If the manager fails to decompose the task correctly, the specialists never get the right instructions.
Use Case: Customer Support. The Router classifies the ticket (Billing vs. Technical) and sends it to the correct department.
The Swarm Pattern (Peer-to-Peer)
In a Swarm, agents talk directly to each other without a central boss. They share a common state or “blackboard” where they post updates.
- Flow: Agents observe the shared state and act when their specific criteria are met. The “Developer” agent writes code; the “Reviewer” agent sees new code and jumps in to critique it.
- Pros: Highly dynamic. Agents can self-organise to solve novel problems that a manager might not foresee.
- Cons: Chaos. Without a supervisor, agents can get stuck in infinite loops of “I improved it” -> “I improved it again”, burning through tokens.
Use Case: Creative Writing or Complex R&D. Different perspectives (The Critic, The Optimist, The Realist) debate a topic until a consensus is reached.
Choosing the Right Approach
For most enterprise applications, we recommend starting with the Router. Predictability is worth more than “emergent behaviour” in a business context. Swarms are powerful, but they require robust guardrails to prevent token runaway.
Why Alps Agility?
We don’t just write prompts: we architect systems. Whether you need the strict control of a Router or the creative power of a Swarm, we design the infrastructure to support it.
Contact us today to design your agent architecture.
Reference: LangChain Blog: Multi-Agent Architectures
