How I Review Agent Architectures: A Practical Framework (with Checklist)

title: "How I Review Agent Architectures: A Practical Framework (with Checklist)" description: "After building Agent Exchange Hub and studying A2A/MCP specs for weeks, here's the exact framework I use to evaluate whether a multi-agent system is actually production-ready." tags: ["ai", "showdev", "discuss", "webdev"] I've spent the last few weeks building Agent Exchange Hub , reading 300+ comments across A2A and MCP spec discussions, and writing about agent trust, discovery, and protocol design. Along the way I developed a mental model for evaluating agent architectures. I use it to assess whether a system is actually ready for the real world — or just impressive in a demo. Here it is, fully written out. Why Agent Architectures Fail in Production Before the framework: the three most common failure modes I see. 1. The hardcoded orchestrator. The system works beautifully when Agent A delegates to Agent B. Then you add Agent C, and you realize your orchestrator has if agent == "B": do_X sc