A2A enables systems where agents from different teams and vendors cooperate. Architecture choices shape how well they work.
Orchestrator and Specialists
A central agent talks to the user, breaks down requests and delegates to specialist agents — travel, finance, HR. It combines results and handles follow-up.
Peer Collaboration
Agents call each other as needed without a single coordinator. Flexible, but harder to monitor and debug.
Cross-Organisation Workflows
A company's procurement agent delegates to a supplier's quoting agent, with each organisation keeping its internal systems private.
Agent Catalogues
Organisations register approved agents in a directory; orchestrators discover them by skill.
Design Principles
- Clear responsibilities: each agent owns a well-defined domain.
- Minimal data sharing: send only what each task needs.
- Explicit contracts: skill descriptions and output formats agreed in advance.
- Timeouts and fallbacks: plan for slow or unavailable agents.
- Traceability: track delegations across agents with shared identifiers.
Keep It Simple
Every additional agent hop adds latency, cost and failure points. Use delegation where specialisation clearly helps.