With the improvement of large language model capabilities, multi-agent architectures have gradually become a popular solution for automating complex tasks. By decomposing tasks and assigning them to multiple specialized agents for collaborative completion, theoretically better results can be achieved than with single-agent systems.
However, during actual deployment, developers quickly discovered a serious issue: token consumption.
According to calculations from the worktrickle project, the token consumption of traditional "naive multi-agent" solutions can be up to 15 times higher than that of single-agent conversations. This means:
- A task that originally cost only $0.02 may cost $0.30 when using multi-agents
- For scenarios requiring frequent calls, costs can quickly get out of control
- Complex code refactoring tasks may cost several dollars per execution
This cost structure makes multi-agent architectures uneconomical in many practical scenarios, limiting their widespread application.