Chat Chain
Decompose a long task into ordered phases — within each phase, two role-paired agents converse until the phase artifact is signed off, then hand it to the next phase.
Intent & Description
🎯 Intent
Decompose a long, multi-disciplinary task into ordered phases; within each phase, run a paired-role chat between two agents until the phase artifact is signed off; pass the artifact to the next phase.
📋 Context
Long tasks — build a small program, prepare a regulatory brief, produce a multi-section report — naturally break into ordered disciplines that have to happen in sequence. The whole task is too long for one agent’s loop, and each discipline benefits from focused two-agent dialogue rather than a solo monologue.
💡 Solution
Define an ordered chain of phases. Each phase has: (a) a defined input artifact, (b) two role-paired agents (e.g. designer + coder, coder + tester), (c) a phase-specific completion predicate, (d) a defined output artifact. Within a phase, the two agents converse multi-turn; the completion predicate ends the phase; the artifact moves to the next phase. The chain is macro-control; the chat is micro-control.
Real-world Use Case
- The work decomposes naturally into ordered phases, each with a paired role and a typed artifact.
- Phase-specific completion predicates can be expressed clearly enough to gate handoff.
- A single agent loop loses focus and broadcast multi-agent chat tangles context.
Source
📌 TL;DR
Ordered phases + role-paired chats inside each phase — the artifact produced in phase N is the only thing that crosses into phase N+1, keeping context tight and progress auditable.
Advantages
- Clear macro-progression with chat-level flexibility inside each phase.
- Keeps each phase’s context tight — only the artifact crosses the phase boundary.
- Auditable artifact trail per phase.
Disadvantages
- Designing the chain (phases + completion predicates) is itself the hard architecture problem.
- Sequential by construction — parallelism inside a phase requires extra design work.
- Wrong phase decomposition forces agents into awkward role pairings that fight the structure.