Section 1

Collaboration and Communication Foundations

This section decides whether a team of agents should exist and lays the two foundations every later pattern stands on: shared state that stays correct when agents write it at the same time, and messages whose cost, order and authority are designed rather than assumed. The running system is the volume's research assistant, a Claude Opus 5.5 lead with Claude Sonnet 5 subagents, priced at $1.14 and 250 seconds per medium query at list prices as of 27 September 2026.