Communication Audit & Optimization

Communication overhead is the hidden tax on multi-agent teams. Every message, every handoff, every context load costs tokens and time. At 20 agents, communication overhead can consume more resources than the actual work. The communication audit is a periodic review that identifies waste: messages that carry redundant information, handoffs that go through the coordinator when direct routing would suffice, context loads that include data the agent never uses.

I run communication audits weekly. The data comes from the trace logs — every message, every handoff, every dispatch is logged with timing and token count. The audit answers three questions. First: which handoffs are highest cost? Sort by token count and review the top 10. Are the payloads bloated with unnecessary context? Can the context be trimmed without affecting output quality? Second: which communication paths are most frequent? If HUNTER-to-CLOSER is the most common handoff, optimizing that path gives the highest return. Can it be streamlined with a tighter contract or a direct route? Third: where are messages being re-sent? If the same context is included in three consecutive dispatches to the same agent, the shared state system is not working and the coordinator is compensating with manual context passing.