Section 1

Collaboration and Communication Foundations

Before any named coordination pattern makes sense, three foundational questions have to be answered with real numbers, not intuition: does splitting work across multiple agents actually help, how do agents avoid corrupting state they share, and how do agents actually exchange information as the team grows. This section answers all three from scratch, each one building directly on the last: collaboration establishes when a team beats an individual, coordination fixes what breaks when that team shares state, and communication reveals why the way agents talk to each other is itself a scaling decision.