Multi-agent frameworks coordinate specialized roles (researcher, coder, reviewer) behind a graph or crew abstraction.
When they help
- Clear role splits and tool boundaries
- You need checkpoints, human approval, or retries
- The alternative is a giant brittle prompt
When they don’t
- A single strong coding agent already finishes the job
- Nobody can explain the graph six weeks later
Popular families: LangGraph (explicit graphs), CrewAI (role crews), AutoGen-style chat/orchestrators. The model underneath still dominates — Opus 5 / GPT-5.6 Sol on today’s board will outperform an ornate graph on a weak model.
Start simple. Add orchestration when failure modes demand it.