Vol. IV · Multi-Agent Architectures · IV.6
Society of Mind
MetaGPT's software company: SOPs as prompts, specialized roles producing artifacts for the next role. Minsky as a Makefile.
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Doctrine
- The SOP is the product. Roles without artifacts are cosplay.
- Pass documents (PRD, design, patches, test report), not chat logs, between roles.
- This pattern is for generating structured work products, not for operating a live system.
SOP as the real invention
MetaGPT's paper: encode Standard Operating Procedures so agents do not improvise the software process. CAMEL studied communicative societies. OpenHands skipped the org chart and built a single engineer with a sandbox — often more effective, less theatrical.
Steal the artifact pipeline. Be skeptical of the headcount.
Anti-patterns
- Simulating twelve corporate titles to write a 20-line script.
- Letting later roles silently ignore the architect's constraints.