Composing multiple smaller agents allows you to build more complex pipelines, which is a lot easier than getting a single monolithic agent to switch between contexts for different tasks. I also get some insight into how the agent performs (e.g via langfuse) because it’s less of a black box.
To use an example: I could write an elaborate prompt to fetch requirements, browse a website, generate E2E test cases, and compile a report, and Claude could run it all to some degree of success. But I could also break it down into four specialised agents, with their own context windows, and make them good at their individual tasks.
Plus I'd say that the smaller context or more specific context is the important thing there.
Even the biggest models seem to have attention problems if you've got a huge context. Even though they support these long contexts it's kinda like a puppy distracted by a dozen toys around the room rather than a human going through a checklist of things.
So I try to give the puppy just one toy at a time.
OK so instead of my current approach of doing a single task at a time (and forgetting to clear the context;) this will make it more feasible to run longer and more complex tasks I think I get it.
To use an example: I could write an elaborate prompt to fetch requirements, browse a website, generate E2E test cases, and compile a report, and Claude could run it all to some degree of success. But I could also break it down into four specialised agents, with their own context windows, and make them good at their individual tasks.