Open-source agents are easy to plug into workflows. Until they start disagreeing. Give one agent the task of retrieving clinical data, another for budget constraints, another for regulatory or submission checks—and ask a simple question: generate a study-ready output. Watch them conflict, duplicate queries, and loop across tools. Tokens burn, latency spikes, and reproducibility—the thing pharma cares about most—starts to break. I'll demo this failure live. Then, in under 5 minutes, restructure the same system—introducing lightweight orchestration with Strands, clearer agent boundaries, and controlled interaction patterns. The same agents that were “fighting” now coordinate, share context, and produce consistent, auditable results in fewer steps and lower cost. The fix isn't more agents or better prompts. It's rethinking how agents interact in regulated, reproducible environments—what they own, how they communicate, and how their outputs can be trusted. The patterns emerging across open-source systems all point to the same idea: agents don't need more autonomy—they need better coordination.
Anannya Roy Chowdhury
AWS
My Agents fought and became friends under 5 mins
Open-source agents are easy to plug into workflows. Until they start disagreeing. Give one agent the task of retrieving clinical data, another for budget constraints, another for regulatory or submission checks—and ask a simple question generate a study-ready output. Watch them conflict, duplicate queries, and loop across tools. Tokens burn, latency spikes, and reproducibility—the thing pharma cares about most—starts to break. I'll demo this failure live. Then, in under 5 minutes, restructure the same system—introducing lightweight orchestration with Strands, clearer agent boundaries, and controlled interaction patterns. The same agents that were “fighting” now coordinate, share context, and produce consistent, auditable results in fewer steps and lower cost. The fix isn't more agents or better prompts. It's rethinking how agents interact in regulated, reproducible environments—what they own, how they communicate, and how their outputs can be trusted. The patterns emerging across open-source systems all point to the same idea agents don't need more autonomy—they need better coordination.