The Agent Framework Trap: Why the Harness Drives Your Costs
· 10 min read
Gartner recorded a 1,445% increase in multi-agent consulting requests last year. In the same period, 40% of multi-agent pilots died within six months.
That gap is the thing worth understanding.
I've been building with agents long enough to know that most framework selection conversations start in the wrong place. Engineers ask "which framework?" when the prior question — do we need multi-agent at all? — hasn't been answered. The data on that prior question is more interesting than most of the framework benchmarks.