When Multi-Agent Is Overkill
Describe your workflow and get an honest assessment. Not every problem needs a swarm of agents. The Complexity Calculator tells you whether a single agent, a simple pipeline, or a genuine multi-agent system is right for your use case.
Complexity Calculator
Answer four questions about your workflow. The calculator scores each dimension and recommends the simplest architecture that will actually work.
Single vs Multi Decision Tool
Compare estimated development time, token cost per run, and ongoing maintenance burden across all three architecture options. The recommended approach is highlighted.
The golden rule: Start with the simplest approach that could possibly work. You can always decompose a single agent into a pipeline later, but you cannot easily collapse a fragile multi-agent system back into something maintainable.
Watch for these traps: Building multi-agent because it sounds impressive, splitting agents before you have proven a single prompt cannot handle the task, and adding orchestration overhead that costs more than the problem it solves.