Coordination Model

AI-Native Coordination Model

An implementation-agnostic specification for AI agent fleet coordination, defined as JSON Schema.

When to use this skill

• Designing a multi-agent coordination workflow
• Choosing which coordination primitive fits a problem
• Writing or validating a playbook configuration
• Checking whether a runtime conforms to the model
• Composing primitives (nesting inner/outer patterns)

Quick reference

The six abstract operations

Every coordination pattern is built from exactly these six operations:

Operation lifecycle

Operations form a natural flow — creation on the left, reduction on the right, observation throughout:

flowchart LR
    spawn(["spawn<br>Create agent"]) --> fork(["fork<br>Diverge N copies"])
    fork --> observe(["observe<br>Read state"])
    observe --> convergence(["convergence<br>Measure similarity"])
    convergence --> prune(["prune<br>Remove losers"])
    prune --> merge(["merge<br>Fuse outputs"])

    observe -.->|"feeds"| prune
    observe -.->|"feeds"| merge

    style spawn fill:#2d6a4f,color:#fff
    style fork fill:#40916c,color:#fff
    style observe fill:#52796f,color:#fff
    style convergence fill:#354f52,color:#fff
    style prune fill:#832f2f,color:#fff
    style merge fill:#1b4965,color:#fff

Coordination primitives

AI-native (Category B) — exploit properties unique to AI agents:

Organizational (Category A) — map human patterns onto agent fleets:

Primitive–operation matrix

Which operations each primitive uses — AI-native primitives use more of the operation set:

block-beta
  columns 7
  space:1 s["spawn"] f["fork"] m["merge"] o["observe"] c["conv."] p["prune"]
  sw["Swarm"] space:1 sw_f["✓"] sw_m["✓"] sw_o["✓"] sw_c["✓"] sw_p["✓"]
  cm["Mesh"] cm_s["✓"] space:1 cm_m["✓"] cm_o["✓"] space:2
  fd["Fractal"] space:1 fd_f["✓"] fd_m["✓"] fd_o["✓"] space:1 fd_p["✓"]
  ga["Adversarial"] ga_s["✓"] space:2 ga_o["✓"] space:2
  st["Stigmergic"] st_s["✓"] space:2 st_o["✓"] space:2
  hi["Org patterns"] hi_s["✓"] space:2 hi_o["✓"] space:2

  style sw fill:#40916c,color:#fff
  style cm fill:#40916c,color:#fff
  style fd fill:#40916c,color:#fff
  style ga fill:#40916c,color:#fff
  style st fill:#40916c,color:#fff
  style hi fill:#52796f,color:#fff

Composability

Primitives nest. The outer stage runs the inner stage within its own execution.

Known good compositions:

Anti-patterns (never compose):

Composability map

Green arrows = valid compositions. Red dashed = anti-patterns.

flowchart TD
    Pipeline["Pipeline"] -->|"✓"| Swarm["Speculative\nSwarm"]
    Stigmergic["Stigmergic"] -->|"✓"| Fractal["Fractal\nDecomposition"]
    Swarm -->|"✓"| Adversarial["Generative-\nAdversarial"]
    Mesh["Context\nMesh"] -->|"✓"| Swarm
    Fractal -->|"✓"| Committee["Committee"]

    Swarm -.-x|"N×M explosion"| Swarm
    Adversarial -.-x|"meta-critique"| Adversarial

    style Pipeline fill:#354f52,color:#fff
    style Swarm fill:#2d6a4f,color:#fff
    style Stigmergic fill:#2d6a4f,color:#fff
    style Fractal fill:#2d6a4f,color:#fff
    style Adversarial fill:#2d6a4f,color:#fff
    style Mesh fill:#2d6a4f,color:#fff
    style Committee fill:#52796f,color:#fff

    linkStyle 5 stroke:#c0392b,stroke-width:2px,stroke-dasharray:5
    linkStyle 6 stroke:#c0392b,stroke-width:2px,stroke-dasharray:5

Schema files

All schemas follow JSON Schema Draft 2020-12. Use them to validate configurations:

• operations.schema.json — Operation signatures and types
• primitives.schema.json — Per-primitive config surfaces with field constraints
• playbook.schema.json — Declarative playbook format with stages, budgets, composition rules
• conformance.schema.json — Runtime capability declaration (MUST/MAY)

Playbook structure

A playbook is a sequence of stages, each applying one coordination primitive:

flowchart TD
    PB["Playbook"] --> S1["Stage 1"]
    PB --> S2["Stage 2"]
    PB --> S3["Stage N"]

    S1 --> P1["primitive"]
    S1 --> C1["config"]
    S1 --> B1["budget"]
    S1 --> T1["trigger + lifecycle"]

    B1 --> MA["max_agents"]
    B1 --> MC["max_cost"]
    B1 --> MT["max_time"]

    T1 --> TR["manual | auto"]
    T1 --> LC["one-shot | persistent"]

    style PB fill:#1b4965,color:#fff
    style S1 fill:#354f52,color:#fff
    style S2 fill:#354f52,color:#fff
    style S3 fill:#354f52,color:#fff
    style P1 fill:#2d6a4f,color:#fff
    style B1 fill:#832f2f,color:#fff

Writing a playbook

A playbook declares what coordination to apply. Example for the "Explore-Harden-Maintain" pattern:

playbook:
  name: explore-harden-maintain
  domain: artifact-production
  description: Divergent creation, adversarial hardening, continuous maintenance
  stages:
    - name: explore
      primitive: speculative-swarm
      config:
        strategies: ["breadth-first", "depth-first", "lateral", "contrarian"]
        checkpoint_interval: "5m"
        convergence_threshold: 0.7
        merge_strategy: fragment-fusion
        budget:
          max_agents: 8
          max_cost: 100
          max_time: "30m"
      trigger: manual
      lifecycle: one-shot
      budget:
        max_agents: 8
        max_cost: 100
        max_time: "30m"

    - name: harden
      primitive: generative-adversarial
      config:
        escalation_modes: ["surface-scan", "edge-cases", "adversarial-inputs", "semantic-analysis"]
        max_rounds: 6
        termination:
          consecutive_clean_rounds: 2
          quality_threshold: 0.9
        progressive_difficulty: true
      trigger: auto
      lifecycle: one-shot
      budget:
        max_agents: 2
        max_cost: 50
        max_time: "20m"

    - name: maintain
      primitive: stigmergic
      config:
        agent_subscriptions:
          - watch_pattern: "artifacts/**"
            production_target: "patches/"
        marker_types: ["needs-review", "stale", "confidence"]
        marker_decay: "1h"
        reaction_debounce: "30s"
      trigger: auto
      lifecycle: persistent
      budget:
        max_agents: 5
        max_cost: 200
        max_time: "24h"

Validate with: python scripts/validate.py playbook.yaml

Validating a playbook

Run the bundled validation script against any playbook YAML/JSON:

python scripts/validate.py my-playbook.yaml

This checks:

• Valid YAML/JSON structure
• All primitive values are from the defined enum
• Config fields match the primitive's schema surface
• Budget blocks are present and well-formed
• No known anti-pattern compositions

Declaring runtime conformance

A runtime declares conformance by producing a conformance.json:

{
  "runtime": {
    "name": "clawden",
    "version": "0.1.0",
    "must": {
      "abstract_operations": {
        "spawn": true,
        "fork": true,
        "merge": true,
        "observe": true,
        "convergence": true,
        "prune": true
      },
      "dynamic_lifecycle": true,
      "state_observability": true,
      "budget_enforcement": true,
      "composable_patterns": true,
      "trace_capture": true,
      "declarative_playbooks": true
    },
    "may": {
      "distributed_execution": false,
      "persistent_state": true,
      "hot_swap_patterns": false
    }
  }
}

Validate with: python scripts/validate.py --schema conformance conformance.json

Cost optimization model

Most fleet work is repetitive pattern execution, not novel reasoning. The model routes agents to the cheapest sufficient tier:

flowchart TD
    REQ["Agent role + primitive"] --> CHECK{"Distilled skill\nexists?"}
    CHECK -->|"Yes, quality ≥ threshold"| STUDENT["Student agent\n(cheapest)"]
    CHECK -->|"No"| FRONTIER["Frontier teacher\n(trace capture ON)"]
    FRONTIER --> TRACE["Execution traces"]
    TRACE --> DISTILL["Distill into skill"]
    DISTILL -.->|"next run"| CHECK

    style STUDENT fill:#2d6a4f,color:#fff
    style FRONTIER fill:#832f2f,color:#fff
    style DISTILL fill:#1b4965,color:#fff
    style CHECK fill:#354f52,color:#fff

Three tiers: Frontier (novel reasoning, highest cost), Mid-tier (balanced), Student (distilled pattern replay, 50–90% cheaper). The traces from frontier runs become training data for future student skills.

Cost optimization model

Most fleet work is repetitive pattern execution, not novel reasoning. The model defines three tiers:

• Frontier — novel reasoning, creative exploration (highest cost)
• Mid-tier — moderate complexity (balanced)
• Student — pattern replay with distilled skills (lowest cost)

A scheduler checks for a matching distilled (role, primitive) skill. If one exists with sufficient quality, use a student agent. If not, use a frontier teacher with trace capture enabled. This produces 50–90% cost reduction across primitives without changing the coordination logic.