Phase 16: Multi-Agent & Swarms

Communication Protocols

Agents that can't speak the same language aren't a team. They're strangers shouting into the void. Implement MCP tool discovery and invocation so agents can use tools exposed by external servers. Build an A2A agent card and task endpoint that allows one agent to delegate work to another over HTTP. Compare MCP (tool access), A2A (agent-to-agent), ACP (enterprise audit), and ANP (decentralized trust) and explain which protocol solves which problem. Wire multiple protocols together in a single system where agents discover tools via MCP and delegate tasks via A2A. You split your system into multiple agents. A researcher, a coder, a reviewer. They're great at their individual jobs. But now you need them to actually talk to each other. Your first attempt is obvious: pass strings around. The researcher returns a blob of text, the coder parses it however it can. It works until the coder misinterprets a research summary, or two agents deadlock waiting for each other, or you need agents built by different teams to collaborate. Suddenly "just pass strings" falls apart. This is the communication protocol problem. Without a shared contract for how agents exchange information, multi-agent systems are fragile, unauditable, and impossible to scale beyond a handful of agents you personally wrote. The AI ecosystem has responded with four protocols, each solving a different slice of…

Communication Protocols: Agents that can't speak the same language aren't a team. They're strangers shouting into the void. Implement MCP tool discovery and…

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