# Example ideas — creative multi-agent topologies

A backlog of *example* projects for `examples/`, each chosen to teach a **different orchestration
topology** on the same harness. Nothing here is implemented yet — these are sketches.

Built so far:
- **`builder-adversary/`** — a **phase machine**: an ordered plan, two roles (Builder + Adversary)
  handing off via `claim(`/`review(` commits. (The cc-ci pattern.)
- **`snakepit/`** — a **worker pool over a pull-queue**: identical worker "snakes" claim tasks from
  a shared filesystem pit by atomic `mv`, plus planner + cleanup specialist species.

Each idea below lists: the metaphor, the topology it teaches, the star harness primitive, and what
makes it distinct from what we already have.

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## Strong candidates

### 🐜 Anthill (stigmergy)
Ants coordinate with *no direct messaging*: they lay pheromone trails, others follow the strong
ones, and trails **evaporate** over time. Agents drop weighted "trail" files toward promising
solutions/paths; a `[[service]]` slowly decays them.
- **Teaches:** indirect coordination through a decaying shared environment (opposite of snakepit's
  explicit claim).
- **Star primitive:** a background **service** as the evaporation clock; emergent routing with zero
  agent-to-agent chat.

### 🍳 The Line (kitchen brigade)
A restaurant pass: prep → sauté → plating → **expo**. A ticket (order) flows station to station; the
expo bounces a bad plate back down the line. Many tickets in flight at once.
- **Teaches:** a true multi-stage **pipeline** (>2 roles) with backpressure / rework — distinct from
  builder-adversary's two roles over a whole-task phase.
- **Star primitive:** chained `handoff` inboxes + per-station commit prefixes (`fire(`, `plate(`,
  `expo(`).

### 🕵️ The Incident Room (blackboard)
A corkboard of pinned facts and red string. Specialist detectives (forensics, alibi, motive,
witnesses) each watch the board and pin a new deduction *only when their preconditions appear*; a
lead declares the case closed.
- **Teaches:** opportunistic, **data-driven activation** — agents fire when the shared state makes
  them relevant, not on a schedule.
- **Star primitive:** a shared blackboard file + watchdog pings on board changes; no fixed order.

### ⚖️ The Senate (debate panel)
N agents argue a question from assigned stances; a moderator synthesizes; rounds repeat until
consensus or a vote.
- **Teaches:** structured **multi-round deliberation** with diverse "minds."
- **Star primitive:** the **phase machine** where each phase = one debate round, plus **per-phase
  model overrides** to give each seat a genuinely different model; `on_complete` writes the verdict.

### 🏃 The Baton (relay / token ring)
Exactly one runner holds the baton (a lock file) and works; passes it on completion. Drop the baton
(crash) and the next runner picks it up.
- **Teaches:** **mutual exclusion + failover** — enforced serialization, the mirror image of the
  snakepit's parallelism.
- **Star primitive:** `watch = "heal"` + the watchdog reaping a dead holder so the baton never gets
  stuck.

### 🦠 The Immune System (detect → respond)
Sentinels patrol logs/metrics/files for anomalies (pathogens); on a hit they raise an antigen (alert
file); responder "macrophages" swarm that specific threat; memory cells record signatures so repeats
resolve faster.
- **Teaches:** an **event-driven monitoring/reactive** topology with escalation.
- **Star primitive:** a watcher **service** emitting alerts + reactive agents woken by inbox pings.
- **Bonus:** genuinely *useful* — a self-healing "watch my repo/CI" tool wearing a fun costume.

### 🧬 The Evolution Chamber (genetic algorithm)
A population of candidate solutions; breeder agents mutate/crossbreed; a selector culls by fitness;
generations advance until fitness plateaus.
- **Teaches:** **population-based iterative search** with a fitness gate.
- **Star primitive:** phase machine where each phase = one generation; `done_marker` trips when
  fitness stops improving.

---

## Quick extras (less fleshed out)

- **🗼 Air Traffic Control** — many workers contend for *one* scarce runway (a single deploy/build
  slot); a controller grants timed landing slots. Teaches centralized **scarce-resource
  arbitration** (snakepit has plentiful work; here the *resource* is the bottleneck).
- **🌙 Day/Night (sleep consolidation)** — workers act by day; a "sleep" agent on a `wake` timer
  consolidates the day's artifacts into long-term memory each night. Teaches **scheduled batch
  consolidation** (the "memory builder / coprophagy" idea as its own example).

---

## Suggested next trio

If picking three that cover the most new ground: **The Line** (pipeline), **The Incident Room**
(blackboard), and **The Immune System** (reactive monitoring — and actually useful).

Each should follow the snakepit shape: a README with the metaphor→compute mapping, an `agents.toml`,
role prompts, and a tiny runnable task.