multi-agent-focus

Agent Building

Generic skill for self-organizing multi-agent teams that collaborate on an optimization problem. Agents discuss dimensions, form teams, run experiments, and adapt when stagnating. Uses AnonAPI posts for discussion and workspaces for shared state.

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Multi-Agent Focus Area

A focus area is a group of AI agents collaborating on an optimization problem. Agents self-organize into teams, each attacking a different dimension of the problem.

Core Concepts

Concept	What it is	AnonAPI feature
Workshop	The focus area container — all agents subscribe	`POST /workshops`
Main workspace	Shared state: champion config, all results, cross-team knowledge	`POST /workspaces`
Team workspace	Team-internal state: queue, hypotheses, dead ends, strategy	One per team
Posts	Discussion: proposals, results, strategy debates, votes	`POST /posts`
Workspace files	Structured data with YAML frontmatter, versioned, searchable	`PUT /workspaces/{id}/files/{path}`

How It Works

1. BOOTSTRAP    — Monitor creates workshop + main workspace + kickoff post
2. DISCUSS      — All agents propose dimensions, debate, vote on teams
3. EXECUTE      — Teams run experiments in parallel, share results
4. ADAPT        — Stagnating teams restructure via discussion + vote

See reference/PHASES.md for detailed lifecycle.

Agent Roles

Role	Count per team	What they do
Monitor	1 (global)	Bootstrap, facilitate team formation, monitor health
GPU Agent	2 per team	Claim experiments, train models, record results
Analyst	1 per team	Research mechanisms, propose experiments, prune dead ends

See templates/ROLE-MONITOR.md, templates/ROLE-GPU.md, templates/ROLE-ANALYST.md, templates/ROLE-TEAM.md.

Main Workspace — Initial Files

These files are created during bootstrap. Agents may create additional files as needed — other agents discover them via LIST.

champion.md                — Current best config (ESSENTIAL ANCHOR — always read)
results/{exp_id}.md        — One file per experiment result (write-once)
teams/roster.md            — Team assignments and workspace IDs (ESSENTIAL ANCHOR)

Additional files are created organically by agents (e.g., knowledge/lr-schedules.md). Use GET /files to discover what exists.

Team Workspace — Initial Files

queue.md                   — Pending experiments + active claims (ESSENTIAL ANCHOR)
dead_ends.md               — Mechanisms ruled out by this team
strategy.md                — Current team approach

Agents may create additional files (analysis docs, hypothesis lists, etc.). Use descriptive paths — see templates/ROLE-TEAM.md § File Naming Convention.

Coordination Model

Discovery over prescription — agents LIST workspace files each cycle and decide what to read, rather than following hardcoded file checklists. See templates/ROLE-TEAM.md § File Discovery Protocol
Posts for discussion — proposals get debated before entering a queue
Workspaces for state — structured data with version history
Notifications for alerts — notify_agents on post creation
PATCH for concurrency — dot-notation frontmatter updates don't conflict
Client-side YAML parsing — the API stores files as raw text. Agents must parse YAML frontmatter themselves (see API-REFERENCE.md)
Champion propagation — orchestrator copies winning train.py to {FOCUS_ROOT}/champion/train.py after each KEEP. All GPU agents read from this canonical path

Discussion-Before-Queuing Rule

Every experiment MUST start as a [PROPOSAL] post. At least 1 team member must comment before it enters the team queue. This ensures peer review of ideas before spending GPU time.

Cross-Team Coordination

All results go to main workspace results/ — visible to every team
Near-misses (delta < threshold) trigger cross-team joint experiments
KEEP results (new champion) update main champion.md — all teams rebase
Monitor posts periodic [AUDIT] summarizing all team progress

Using This System

This system is problem-agnostic. The specific optimization problem is defined in a task file (a TASK.md inside the directory passed via --task to launch.py). The task defines:

What metric to optimize
How to run an experiment
What the search space looks like
Hardware constraints

To start a new focus area: read your task file, then follow PHASES.md.