A Scalable Communication Protocol for Networks of Large Language Models

Reference: Samuele Marro, Emanuele La Malfa, Jesse Wright, Guohao Li, Nigel Shadbolt, Michael Wooldridge, Philip Torr (2024). arXiv:2410.11905v1 (Oxford / Eigent AI). Source file: 2410.11905v1.pdf. URL

Summary

Introduces Agora, a meta-protocol for inter-agent communication in large heterogeneous networks of LLM-powered agents. Agora frames the design space as the Agent Communication Trilemma — versatility, efficiency, portability — and argues no single format (natural language, structured APIs like REST, or semantic-web RDF) can satisfy all three simultaneously.

Agora’s trick is to use different formats for different traffic volumes: rare/novel messages flow as natural language handled by LLMs; frequent patterns are formalised into Protocol Documents (PDs) negotiated between agents and then served by cheap LLM-written routines. A 100-agent demo shows emergent self-organising protocols and ~5x cost reduction over natural-language-only communication.

Key Ideas

• Agent Communication Trilemma: versatility vs efficiency vs portability
• Protocol Documents (PDs): hash-identified, agent-negotiated, machine-readable specs
• Hybrid hierarchy: NL bootstrap -> PD negotiation -> LLM-written routines -> traditional protocols
• Fully decentralised, hash-addressed storage (IPFS-compatible)
• Emergent protocols among 100 heterogeneous LLM agents without central coordination

Connections

• KQML as an Agent Communication Language
• KQML
• FIPA-ACL
• Agent Communication Languages
• LLM Agents
• Multi-Agent Cooperation and the Emergence of Natural Language
• Agents Framework - Zhou et al
• Ontologies

Conceptual Contribution

• Claim: No single communication format can simultaneously satisfy versatility, efficiency, and portability (the Agent Communication Trilemma) at scale; a meta-protocol that dynamically mixes natural language, structured data, and LLM-written routines can sidestep the trilemma.
• Mechanism: Agora uses hash-identified Protocol Documents (PDs) — plain-text, implementation-agnostic specs — negotiated on demand between LLM agents. Frequent traffic is handled by cheap LLM-written routines implementing a PD; rare or novel traffic falls back to LLMs with natural language. Decentralised, content-addressed (IPFS-style) PD distribution; demonstrated on a 100-agent heterogeneous network showing emergent protocols and ~5× cost reduction.
• Concepts introduced/used: Agent Communication Trilemma, Protocol Documents, Meta-protocol, Emergent Protocols, Emergent Communication, LLM Agents, Content-addressed Storage, Negotiated Protocols, Negotiation, Agent Communication Languages
• Stance: engineering / systems
• Relates to: Modern successor to KQML as an Agent Communication Language and FIPA-ACL, replacing stipulated performatives with negotiated PDs. Echoes the emergent-language findings of Multi-Agent Cooperation and the Emergence of Natural Language and Emergence of Grounded Compositional Language in Multi-Agent Populations at the protocol-document level. Overlaps the design space of Model Context Protocol, Agent-to-Agent Protocol, Agent Network Protocol. Its bottom-up spirit mirrors The Extensible Language - Graham.

Tags

#llm-agents #agent-communication #protocols #emergent-protocols