[YOUR VOICE] The Claim
Multi-agent systems don’t fail dramatically. They drift — silently, gradually, and in ways that look like progress until you realize the system is building something nobody asked for. The failure modes are predictable and nameable, but nobody has published a catalog.
The Mechanism
The Failure Mode Watchlist is a public artifact that catalogs drift patterns observed across 11 agent entities coordinated through the Interagent Protocol. Each failure mode is:
- Named — a specific, memorable label
- Described — what it looks like when it’s happening
- Sourced — which project or interaction surfaced it
- Linked to intervention — what structural change prevents or mitigates it
The watchlist treats multi-agent coordination failures as a first-class research subject rather than anecdotal frustration.
MISSING — Specific failure mode examples with names and descriptions
The Evidence
Observed failure modes
MISSING — Table of named failure modes with: Name, Description, Frequency, Severity, Intervention
The fractal property
MISSING — The companion deep-dive on how certain failure modes reproduce at different scales (agent-to-agent, project-to-project, system-to-system)
[YOUR VOICE] Implications
MISSING — Why this matters for anyone running multi-agent workflows. Why naming failure modes is the prerequisite for preventing them.
Open Questions
- Are these failure modes universal to multi-agent systems or specific to the operator-as-coordinator architecture?
- How do failure modes compound (does failure mode A make failure mode B more likely)?
- What’s the minimum monitoring surface needed to detect drift before it compounds?
Reference Documents
| Document | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Interagent Protocol _docs/ | MISSING — Protocol design and coordination patterns |
| Failure Mode Watchlist artifact | MISSING — Full catalog of named failure modes |
| Phase 3 research write-up | MISSING — Research methodology backing the watchlist |