How to Arrange Agents

Agent execution should work like a well-run organization. Consultant-style coordination is becoming a first-class design pattern: a "cheap executor + expensive consultant" combination. The key insight: use fast models for most steps, only escalate complexity when decisions are hard.

Haiku + Opus combination reportedly doubled BrowseComp scores compared to Haiku alone. Sonnet + Opus combination reduces task cost while improving SWE-bench multilingual scores. This pattern is being rapidly adopted in open-source: LangChain DeepAgents implemented consultant middleware.

The direction agents are evolving: increasingly like fast worker models, delegating complex decisions to "intelligent advisors."

Claude for Word

This could erode Microsoft's own business.