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Discussion on: The Forensic Team: Architecting Multi-Agent Handoffs with MCP

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klement_gunndu profile image
klement Gunndu

The supervisor routing pattern is clean. One thing worth adding — when agents hand off mid-task, the context window carryover gets expensive fast. Have you tried truncating the shared state to just the last tool-call result instead of the full conversation?

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kenwalger profile image
Ken W Alger

Great point, @klement_gunndu I'll play around with that approach.

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kenwalger profile image
Ken W Alger

@klement_gunndu

After thinking about this more (sorry it was late last night), you’re hitting on the 'hidden tax' of multi-agent systems: Context Bloat.

You’re absolutely right that the supervisor pattern, in its purest form, can become a token hog. To clarify, the 'Forensic Team' series was designed as a Proof of Concept (PoC) to demonstrate the routing logic and MCP integration, rather than a production-ready system for high-volume, thousand-turn investigations.

If I were scaling this for a high-volume environment, I’d move away from 'Full History Carryover' and use a 'State-Based Handoff' instead. Here’s how I’d tackle it:

  • The 'Briefing' Pattern: Instead of passing the full thread, the Supervisor generates a 3-sentence summary of the 'Current Mission' and 'Findings to Date' to accompany the last tool result.
  • MCP-Managed State: I’d use a dedicated MCP server to act as a 'Long-Term Memory' (like a vector DB or simple key-value store). Agents pull only the specific artifacts they need by ID, rather than carrying the whole payload in the prompt. More articles coming on this topic, actually.
  • Recursive Truncation: Automatically stripping out intermediate thought processes (the 'inner monologue') before handing the baton to the next agent, leaving only the 'Public' tool outputs.

The goal is to move from a 'Shared Conversation' to a 'Shared Blackboard.'

Thanks for pointing out a critical optimization for anyone moving past the PoC stage!"