@chllming/wave-orchestration 0.6.3 → 0.7.1

package/docs/context7/planner-agent/papers/silo-bench-a-scalable-environment-for-evaluating-distributed-coordination-in-multi-agent-llm-systems.md

@@ -0,0 +1,3747 @@
+---
+summary: 'Converted paper text and source links for Silo-Bench: A Scalable Environment for Evaluating Distributed Coordination in Multi-Agent LLM Systems.'
+read_when:
+  - Reviewing harness and coordination research source material in the docs tree
+  - You want the extracted paper text with source links preserved
+topics:
+  - blackboard-and-shared-workspaces
+  - repo-context-and-evaluation
+kind: 'paper'
+title: 'Silo-Bench: A Scalable Environment for Evaluating Distributed Coordination in Multi-Agent LLM Systems'
+---
+# Silo-Bench: A Scalable Environment for Evaluating Distributed Coordination in Multi-Agent LLM Systems
+
+<Note>
+Converted from the source document on 2026-03-21. The repo does not retain downloaded source files; they were fetched transiently, converted to Markdown, and deleted after extraction.
+</Note>
+
+## Metadata
+
+| Field | Value |
+| --- | --- |
+| Content type | Paper / report |
+| Authors | Yuzhe Zhang, Feiran Liu, Yi Shan, Xinyi Huang, Xin Yang, Yueqi Zhu, Xuxin Cheng, Cao Liu, Ke Zeng, Terry Jingchen Zhang, Wenyuan Jiang |
+| Year | 2026 |
+| Venue | arXiv 2603.01045 |
+| Research bucket | P0 direct hits |
+| Maps to | Distributed coordination benchmarks, communication-reasoning gaps, and evidence on integration failures in multi-agent systems. |
+| Harness fit | A concrete benchmark for testing whether shared-workspace coordination actually improves reasoning integration. |
+| Source page | [Open source](https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.01045) |
+| Source PDF | [Open PDF](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.01045.pdf) |
+
+## Extracted text
+### Page 1
+
+SILO-BENCH: A Scalable Environment for Evaluating Distributed
+
+Coordination in Multi-Agent LLM Systems
+
+Yuzhe Zhang1 Feiran Liu1 Yi Shan1 Xinyi Huang1 Xin Yang2 Yueqi Zhu1
+
+Xuxin Cheng4 Cao Liu4 Ke Zeng4 Terry Jingchen Zhang3,5† Wenyuan Jiang3†*
+
+1 Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China
+
+2 Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China 3 ETH Zürich, Switzerland
+
+4 Meituan LongCat Interaction Team 5 Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence
+
+Abstract
+
+Large language models are increasingly de-
+
+ployed in multi-agent systems to overcome
+
+context limitations by distributing information
+
+across agents. Yet whether agents can reli-
+
+ably compute with distributed information—
+
+rather than merely exchange it—remains an
+
+open question. We introduce SILO-BENCH,
+
+a role-agnostic benchmark of 30 algorithmic
+
+tasks across three communication complexity
+
+levels, evaluating 54 configurations over 1,620
+
+experiments. Our experiments expose a fun-
+
+damental Communication-Reasoning Gap:
+
+agents spontaneously form task-appropriate co-
+
+ordination topologies and exchange informa-
+
+tion actively, yet systematically fail to synthe-
+
+size distributed state into correct answers. The
+
+failure is localized to the reasoning-integration
+
+stage—agents often acquire sufficient informa-
+
+tion but cannot integrate it. This coordina-
+
+tion overhead compounds with scale, eventu-
+
+ally eliminating parallelization gains entirely.
+
+These findings demonstrate that naively scaling
+
+agent count cannot circumvent context limita-
+
+tions, and SILO-BENCH provides a foundation
+
+for tracking progress toward genuinely collabo-
+
+rative multi-agent systems.
+
+1 Introduction
+
+The rapid advancement of Large Language Models
+
+(LLMs) has demonstrated remarkable capabilities
+
+in individual inference and generation tasks (AI,
+
+2023; Touvron et al., 2023; DeepSeek-AI et al.,
+
+2024). However, as the scale and complexity of
+
+real-world problems continue to grow, a fundamen-
+
+tal bottleneck has emerged: the limited context
+
+window of a single model restricts its ability to
+
+process global information (Li et al., 2024; Chen
+
+et al., 2024b; An et al., 2024). Even with recent
+
+progress in extending context lengths to millions of
+
+tokens (Reid et al., 2024), the quadratic cost of at-
+
+tention (Ratner et al., 2023; Yen et al., 2024) makes
+
+*†
+
+Corresponding Author.
+
+Step 1: Data Partition
+
+Step 2: Agent Initialization
+
+Step 3: Collaborative Execution
+
+Step 4: Metric Computation
+
+1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
+
+1 2 3 4 7 6 5 8 9
+
+1 2 4 5 6 7
+
+Iterative
+
+Exchange
+
+Agent 0
+
+I have 9, 2, 7...
+
+Agent 1
+
+I want to get your data...
+
+Agent 2
+
+Sure ~ I have 8..
+
+Data
+
+Propagation
+
+This is a Sort task,
+
+I am Agent 0...
+
+This is a Sort task,
+
+I am Agent 1...
+
+This is a Sort task,
+
+I am Agent 2...
+
+Communication Density: 0.92
+
+Success Rate: 33.3%
+
+Token Effciency: 194
+
+Agent 0
+
+Agent 1
+
+Agent 2
+
+Null
+
+Agent0: Agent1:
+
+Agent2:
+
+✅ ❌
+
+❌
+
+8 9
+
+2 79 1 35 48 6
+
+12 3 457 89
+
+III-21:
+
+Distributed Sort 6
+
+Partial Corr. Score: 40.0%
+
+Figure 1: Pipeline of SILO-BENCH. Global information
+
+is partitioned across N agents, each holding only local
+
+data. Agents must communicate through the provided
+
+protocol to reconstruct global truth. Success requires
+
+effective collaboration strategies. This is an example of
+
+the III-21 Distributed Sort (Appendix E.)
+
+centralized processing increasingly impractical for
+
+truly large-scale tasks.
+
+Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) offer a compelling
+
+architectural paradigm to address this scalability
+
+challenge (Zhang et al., 2024a; Wang et al., 2024b).
+
+By distributing global information across multiple
+
+agents that collaborate to compute results, MAS
+
+can theoretically overcome the token limitations
+
+of single models (Liu et al., 2023). This dis-
+
+tributed approach mirrors successful patterns in
+
+traditional computing—from MapReduce to mod-
+
+ern distributed databases—where data partitioning
+
+and coordinated computation across nodes achieve
+
+scales unattainable by a single machine (Dean and
+
+Ghemawat, 2008). In the realm of large models, we
+
+1
+
+arXiv:2603.01045v1 [cs.MA] 1 Mar 2026
+
+### Page 2
+
+define the scenario where an individual agent has
+
+access only to partial information, thereby neces-
+
+sitating coordination to resolve token constraints,
+
+as information silos. However, a critical question
+
+remains underexplored: Can current LLM-based
+
+agents effectively collaborate within information
+
+silos to compute a globally correct answer (Qian
+
+et al., 2024, 2023; Liu et al., 2023)? Existing multi-
+
+agent benchmarks either prescribe fixed communi-
+
+cation structures (Li et al., 2023; Wu et al., 2024;
+
+Hong et al., 2023) or focus on social simulation
+
+rather than computational collaboration (Park et al.,
+
+2023; Lan et al., 2024). These approaches often
+
+introduce inductive bias into the agents’ final out-
+
+puts (Baltaji et al., 2024). For instance, if an agent
+
+is assigned the role of a "doctor", it may exhibit
+
+poor performance in artistic domains, which contra-
+
+dicts the goal of developing general-purpose agents
+
+(An et al., 2024; Qian et al., 2024, 2023; Liu et al.,
+
+2023). Furthermore, most benchmarks to date tar-
+
+get specific tasks (Deng et al., 2024; Chen et al.,
+
+2024a; Gioacchini et al., 2024) and fail to address
+
+a significant gap in our understanding: whether
+
+logic-based models can autonomously discover and
+
+execute effective coordination strategies for dis-
+
+tributed computing problems. Addressing this gap
+
+is a key objective for future AGI evaluation. To
+
+bridge this gap, we propose SILO-BENCH—a pio-
+
+neering benchmark for evaluating free-form com-
+
+munication and collaboration in multi-agent LLM
+
+systems (Liu et al., 2023). In summary, our contri-
+
+butions are as follows:
+
+• We introduce SILO-BENCH, a role-agnostic
+
+configurable environment for evaluating dis-
+
+tributed coordination under information si-
+
+los. Unlike static test suites that prescribe fixed
+
+roles and communication scripts, our framework
+
+can generate unlimited evaluation instances while
+
+providing high-level task hints—allowing obser-
+
+vation of whether agents can translate structural
+
+understanding into effective coordination proto-
+
+cols (Press et al., 2021; Liu et al., 2023).
+
+• We conduct the largest systematic study of
+
+multi-agent collaboration to date by instanti-
+
+ating 54 representative configurations. Span-
+
+ning diverse protocols and computing paradigms
+
+(Zhao et al., 2024; Islam et al., 2024a), we pro-
+
+pose a multi-dimensional metric suite to com-
+
+prehensively quantify the trade-off between task
+
+success rate, token consumption, and communi-
+
+cation density.
+
+• We expose critical scalability limitations and
+
+the Communication-Reasoning Gap in current
+
+LLMs. Our results reveal that while agents can
+
+spontaneously discover task-appropriate commu-
+
+nication topologies, they fail to translate effective
+
+coordination into correct distributed computation.
+
+This disconnect, coupled with inefficient infor-
+
+mation synthesis, causes performance to collapse
+
+as task complexity increases and the agent scale
+
+expands.
+
+2 Related Work
+
+Context Limitations and Distributed Reason-
+
+ing. The finite context window of LLMs con-
+
+stitutes a fundamental bottleneck for processing
+
+large-scale information. While recent advances
+
+have extended context lengths to millions of to-
+
+kens (Reid et al., 2024; Liu et al., 2024a), the
+
+quadratic computational complexity of attention
+
+mechanisms makes centralized processing increas-
+
+ingly resource-intensive and prone to “lost-in-the-
+
+middle” phenomena (Liu et al., 2024b). Although
+
+Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) offers a
+
+palliative solution (Wang et al., 2024c; Islam et al.,
+
+2024b), it often fractures global context, strug-
+
+gling with tasks that require holistic reasoning
+
+across disjoint segments. Existing benchmarks like
+
+SCROLLS (Shaham et al., 2022), LongBench (Bai
+
+et al., 2024), and ∞Bench (Zhang et al., 2024b)
+
+effectively evaluate single-agent retrieval but over-
+
+look the paradigm of distributed collaboration. We
+
+posit that overcoming the context barrier requires
+
+shifting from centralized attention to collaborative
+
+computation, where agents act as distributed pro-
+
+cessors to digest partitioned information and syn-
+
+thesize global insights—a capability currently un-
+
+measured by standard long-context evaluations.
+
+Multi-Agent Architectures and Role-
+
+Agnosticism. The paradigm of orchestrating
+
+multiple LLM agents has evolved from simple
+
+role-playing to complex problem-solving frame-
+
+works. Foundational works like CAMEL (Li et al.,
+
+2023) and MetaGPT (Hong et al., 2023) utilize
+
+role-specialized agents (e.g., assigning “Manager”
+
+or “Coder” personas) embedded within fixed hier-
+
+archical or waterfall workflows. While effective
+
+for domain-specific tasks like software engineering
+
+(Islam et al., 2024a), these approaches entangle the
+
+agents’ reasoning capabilities with semantic role
+
+priors, making it difficult to isolate the contribution
+
+of the communication architecture itself. Other
+
+2
+
+### Page 3
+
+Agent 3
+
+Agent 2
+
+Agent 4
+
+Agent 1
+
+1 2
+
+43
+
+Exchange 1
+
+Exchange
+
+Agent 3 Agent 2
+
+Agent 4
+
+Agent 1
+
+1
+
+2
+
+3
+
+I need to exchange
+
+with everyone to get
+
+more information~
+
+4
+
+Agent 3Agent 2
+
+Agent 4
+
+Agent 1
+
+1
+
+2
+
+4
+
+3
+
+I need all
+
+your data!
+
+Level II：Mesh Network Level III: Global ShuffleLevel I：Aggregation
+
+31
+
+4
+
+2
+
+Exchange 2
+
+4
+
+Who have?2
+
+Figure 2: Three complexity levels in SILO-BENCH characterized by their communication patterns. Level I
+
+(Aggregation): A central agent collects data from all peers via a star topology. Level II (Mesh Network): Agents
+
+exchange information with immediate neighbors through pairwise communication. Level III (Global Shuffle): All
+
+agents must communicate with every other agent, requiring full mesh connectivity.
+
+efforts, such as debate-based systems (Du et al.,
+
+2023) or Mixture-of-Agents (Wang et al., 2024a),
+
+often prescribe static topological constraints that
+
+limit dynamic information flow. We introduce
+
+SILO-BENCH, a role-agnostic configurable
+
+environment with task-structural guidance
+
+for evaluating distributed coordination under
+
+information silos. Unlike static test suites that
+
+prescribe fixed roles and communication scripts,
+
+our framework dynamically generates unlimited
+
+evaluation instances while providing high-level
+
+task hints—allowing observation of whether agents
+
+can translate structural understanding into effective
+
+coordination protocols (Press et al., 2021; Liu
+
+et al., 2023).
+
+3 SILO-BENCH
+
+This section presents the architecture of SILO-
+
+BENCH, a configurable environment for evaluating
+
+multi-agent collaboration under information silos.
+
+Each configuration is defined by three orthogonal
+
+dimensions: agent scale N, communication pro-
+
+tocol P, and language model M. We describe
+
+the task space, evaluation metrics, and execution
+
+pipeline.
+
+3.1 Task Space
+
+A central design goal of SILO-BENCH is to ground
+
+task difficulty in principled communication com-
+
+plexity theory, so that observed performance gaps
+
+can be attributed to coordination demands rather
+
+than ad hoc task choice. The theoretical founda-
+
+tion for analyzing distributed computation costs
+
+dates back to Yao’s seminal work on communica-
+
+tion complexity (Yao, 1979), which established the
+
+framework for quantifying the minimum bits re-
+
+quired for distributed parties to compute a function.
+
+Building on this foundation, we categorize tasks by
+
+their optimal communication complexity:
+
+τk = (fk, Xk, y∗
+
+k) (1)
+
+where fk specifies the computational function, Xk
+
+is the global input data, and y∗
+
+k is the ground-
+
+truth answer. Tasks are organized into three levels
+
+based on their optimal communication complex-
+
+ity (complete task specifications are provided in
+
+Appendix E).
+
+Level I: Aggregation (O(N) communication).
+
+As illustrated in Figure 2 (left), these tasks ex-
+
+hibit embarrassingly parallel structure followed by
+
+reduction. Each agent processes its local shard
+
+independently, producing intermediate results ag-
+
+gregated through associative operations (e.g., max,
+
+sum, xor). The optimal topology is a star or tree
+
+structure where one agent collects all partial re-
+
+sults. Representative tasks include global maxi-
+
+mum (LC-414: “Third Maximum Number”), dis-
+
+tributed voting (LC-169: “Majority Element”), and
+
+word frequency counting (LC-2085).
+
+Level II: Mesh Network (O(N) communication).
+
+As shown in Figure 2 (center), these tasks exhibit
+
+spatial locality: agent i’s computation depends pri-
+
+marily on neighboring agents i − 1 and i + 1. Infor-
+
+mation propagates through a structured mesh via
+
+pairwise exchanges, with optimal topology being
+
+a linear chain requiring N − 1 point-to-point ex-
+
+changes. Representative tasks include prefix sum
+
+(LC-1480), moving average (LC-346: “Moving Av-
+
+erage from Data Stream”), and trapping rain water
+
+(LC-42).
+
+3
+
+### Page 4
+
+Level III: Global Shuffle (O(N log N) to O(N 2)
+
+communication). As depicted in Figure 2 (right),
+
+these tasks feature irregular, potentially all-to-all
+
+communication patterns where any agent’s out-
+
+put may depend on information from any other
+
+agent. The range O(N log N)–O(N 2) spans from
+
+the classical lower bound for distributed reorgani-
+
+zation to the full-consensus cost imposed by our
+
+evaluation criterion, where every agent must out-
+
+put the complete global answer. Representative
+
+tasks include distributed sorting (LC-912), graph
+
+connectivity (LC-323), and matrix multiplication
+
+(LC-311).
+
+3.2 Task Construction Pipeline.
+
+LeetCode problems serve solely as algorithmic
+
+inspiration—we do not transform raw LeetCode
+
+data. For each task category (e.g., “Global Max-
+
+imum”), we independently implement a Python
+
+generator that programmatically produces ran-
+
+dom inputs and exact ground-truth answers. A
+
+task instance is one concrete input–output pair
+
+drawn from this generator under a fixed (N, P, M)
+
+configuration—where N is the agent scale, P the
+
+communication protocol, and M the language
+
+model—and a fixed random seed, ensuring repro-
+
+ducibility while allowing unlimited fresh instances.
+
+To illustrate: for Level-I Global Maximum (in-
+
+spired by LC-414, the “Third Maximum Number”
+
+problem), given agent count N and per-agent shard
+
+size k, the generator (i) samples N × k integers uni-
+
+formly at random, (ii) partitions them into N equal
+
+shards X1,..., XN, (iii) computes y∗ = max(X),
+
+and (iv) records the fixed seed for reproducibility.
+
+Each agent receives only its local shard Xi and must
+
+coordinate to determine y∗. This pipeline gener-
+
+alises directly to all 30 tasks: the generator encodes
+
+the task-specific function fk, scales global input
+
+size proportionally with N to maintain constant per-
+
+agent workload, and produces exact ground-truth
+
+answers enabling fully objective evaluation.
+
+3.3 Evaluation Metrics
+
+We define four complementary metrics to capture
+
+both what agents achieve and how they coordinate.
+
+Let ˆyi denote agent i’s submitted answer, and let mi
+
+denote the total number of messages successfully
+
+transmitted outward by agent i during the entire
+
+collaboration.
+
+Success Rate (S). Measures the proportion of
+
+agents converging to the correct answer:
+
+S =
+
+1
+
+N
+
+NX
+
+i=1
+
+1[ˆyi = y∗] (2)
+
+A task instance is successful when S = 1, indicat-
+
+ing unanimous convergence.
+
+Partial Correctness Score (P). Binary success
+
+rate can understate partial progress. We intro-
+
+duce a continuous measure of answer quality tai-
+
+lored to each task category: for Level-I, P is the
+
+fraction of agents within tolerance of the ground
+
+truth; for Level-II, the fraction of correctly com-
+
+puted elements per local segment; for Level-III, the
+
+longest correctly ordered subsequence relative to
+
+total length. Letting qi ∈ [0, 1] denote the per-agent
+
+quality score:
+
+P =
+
+1
+
+N
+
+NX
+
+i=1
+
+qi (3)
+
+Together with S, this score allows us to isolate
+
+where coordination breaks down: the gap P −
+
+S quantifies performance lost specifically at the
+
+reasoning-integration stage rather than at the com-
+
+munication stage.
+
+Token Consumption (C). Quantifies computa-
+
+tional cost per communication round:
+
+C =
+
+PN
+
+i=1
+
+PR
+
+r=1 tout
+
+i [r]
+
+Rmax
+
+(4)
+
+where tout
+
+i [r] is the number of output tokens gen-
+
+erated by agent i in round r, and Rmax is the max
+
+number of rounds executed.
+
+Communication Density (D). Captures inter-
+
+agent interaction intensity. Here N (N − 1) is
+
+the directed-edge count when each ordered pair
+
+exchanges exactly one message; since agents may
+
+send multiple messages to the same recipient across
+
+rounds, D ∈ [0, +∞):
+
+D =
+
+PN
+
+i=1 mi
+
+N (N − 1)
+
+(5)
+
+Values near 0 suggest sparse, targeted exchanges;
+
+D = 1 indicates one message per directed pair on
+
+average; values exceeding 1 reflect iterative multi-
+
+round exchanges. For the SFS protocol (see Ap-
+
+pendix A), mi counts the number of times other
+
+4
+
+### Page 5
+
+agents successfully read files written by agent i,
+
+preserving the same “information actually trans-
+
+ferred” semantics as direct message-passing.
+
+Together, S and P measure what agents achieve,
+
+C measures at what cost, and D reveals how they
+
+coordinate.
+
+3.4 Execution Pipeline
+
+Given task τ = (f, X, y∗) and configuration
+
+(N, P, M), the evaluation proceeds through four
+
+phases.
+
+Phase 1: Data Partition. PARTITION(X, N) →
+
+{X1,..., XN}, where |Xi| ≈ |X |/N ensures
+
+equipartition and no agent holds privileged infor-
+
+mation.
+
+Phase 2: Agent Initialization. Each agent i is
+
+initialized with model M and receives INIT(i) ←
+
+(desc(f, Xi), P), specifying the core task logic,
+
+local data, and protocol constraint. The prompt
+
+provides task-structural guidance while preserving
+
+strategic autonomy (see Appendix B).
+
+Phase 3: Collaborative Execution. Agents en-
+
+gage in iterative communication for up to Rmax
+
+rounds. All N agents are activated in parallel
+
+within each round: they receive incoming messages
+
+from the previous round, independently decide on
+
+actions, and execute them simultaneously. Mes-
+
+sages or files written in round r become visible
+
+at the start of round r + 1. Execution terminates
+
+when all agents submit answers or the round limit
+
+is reached.
+
+Phase 4: Metric Computation. The four metrics
+
+(S, P, C, D) are computed from submitted answers
+
+{ˆyi}N
+
+i=1 and recorded communication logs.
+
+4 Experiments
+
+We systematically evaluate multi-agent coordina-
+
+tion across three orthogonal axes—agent scale,
+
+communication protocol, and language model—
+
+yielding a factorial design that covers qualitatively
+
+distinct coordination regimes.
+
+4.1 Experimental Setup
+
+Each evaluation instance in SILO-BENCH is speci-
+
+fied by agent scale N, communication protocol P,
+
+and language model M. All models are deployed
+
+locally with default temperature and 128K context
+
+windows.
+
+Received
+
+from Agent1
+
+Agent 1 Agent 3
+
+Agent 2
+
+Agent 4
+
+Send to Agent3
+
+Agent 1 Agent 3
+
+Agent 2
+
+Agent 4
+
+File System
+
+Agent 1
+
+Agent 2
+
+Agent 3
+
+Agent 4
+
+BP SFS
+
+Broadcast!
+
+P2P
+
+Figure 3: The three communication protocols employed
+
+in SILO-BENCH.
+
+Agent Scale (N). We vary team size across
+
+N ∈ {2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100}, chosen to probe quali-
+
+tatively distinct coordination regimes. The min-
+
+imal team (N = 2) isolates fundamental pair-
+
+wise coordination without overhead. Small groups
+
+(N ∈ {5, 10}) allow agents to feasibly track all
+
+peers simultaneously. Medium scale (N = 20)
+
+begins to make exhaustive peer tracking challeng-
+
+ing, pushing agents toward selective communica-
+
+tion. Large scale (N ∈ {50, 100}) makes hierar-
+
+chical or highly selective coordination effectively
+
+necessary—and, as our results confirm, largely be-
+
+yond the reach of current LLMs.
+
+Communication Protocol (P). As shown in
+
+Figure 3, we instantiate three protocols: P2P—
+
+directed messaging where agents explicitly address
+
+individual recipients; BP—broadcast messaging
+
+where each transmission reaches all agents simul-
+
+taneously; SFS—indirect coordination through a
+
+shared file system. Agents retain complete auton-
+
+omy in deciding what to share, with whom, and
+
+when. Detailed specifications are provided in Ap-
+
+pendix A.
+
+Language Model (M). All N agents within a
+
+configuration share the same model, isolating co-
+
+ordination capability from heterogeneity effects.
+
+We evaluate three frontier open-source models:
+
+DeepSeek-V3.1 (DeepSeek-AI et al., 2024), GPT-
+
+OSS-120B (OpenAI et al., 2025), and Qwen3-
+
+Next-80B-A3B (Yang et al., 2025).
+
+Our Experimental Setup
+
+Tasks: 30 (10 per difficulty level)
+
+Scales: 6 (2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100)
+
+Protocols: 3 (P2P, BP, SFS)
+
+Models: 3 (DeepSeek, GPT, Qwen)
+
+This yields 6 × 3 × 3 = 54 unique configura-
+
+tions and 30 × 54 = 1,620 total experiments (see
+
+Appendix C for infrastructure details). To disen-
+
+5
+
+### Page 6
+
+tangle coordination overhead from intrinsic task
+
+difficulty, we additionally conduct N =1 baseline
+
+experiments where a single agent receives the com-
+
+plete global input and answers directly without
+
+communication. We define Relative Coordination
+
+Cost (RCC) = 1 − SR(N =k)/SR(N =1), captur-
+
+ing the fraction of single-agent performance lost
+
+to coordination overhead. The N =1 oracle repre-
+
+sents the upper bound; SILO-BENCH asks whether
+
+distributed agents can approach this bound through
+
+coordination alone.
+
+4.2 Overall Performance
+
+Table 1 summarizes performance across all mod-
+
+els and configurations. DeepSeek-V3.1 achieves
+
+a 36.9% average success rate, followed by GPT-
+
+OSS-120B at 16.9% and Qwen3 at 8.2%—a 4.5×
+
+spread. Even the strongest model fails nearly two-
+
+thirds of the time, establishing that current LLMs
+
+cannot reliably coordinate under information silos.
+
+Coordination overhead, not task difficulty,
+
+drives the performance gap. To confirm that
+
+failures stem from coordination rather than intrin-
+
+sic task hardness, we compare multi-agent suc-
+
+cess rates against the N =1 oracle. Table 2 reports
+
+results for GPT-OSS-120B (trends are consistent
+
+across models). Even at the smallest team size
+
+(k=2), multi-agent systems already lose 15–49%
+
+of single-agent performance, and RCC compounds
+
+steadily with scale, reaching 80–100% at k=50
+
+for Level-II and Level-III tasks. Crucially, the
+
+single-agent success rate difference between Level-
+
+I and Level-III is modest—only about 15 percent-
+
+age points—yet the multi-agent gap balloons to
+
+over 18 percentage points, confirming that perfor-
+
+mance collapse is driven by coordination failure,
+
+not by the tasks themselves being harder.
+
+Agents gather information but fail to integrate it.
+
+While RCC reveals that coordination fails, the Par-
+
+tial Correctness Score (PCS) reveals where. PCS
+
+measures continuous answer quality (Section 3.3),
+
+and the divergence between PCS and SR isolates
+
+the reasoning-integration stage as the bottleneck.
+
+At N ≥50 on Level-III tasks, SR drops to 0% while
+
+PCS remains at 8–16%, confirming that agents ac-
+
+quire partial global information but cannot synthe-
+
+size it correctly.This dissociation appears even on
+
+simpler tasks: averaged across all scales on Level-I
+
+tasks, DeepSeek-V3.1 achieves a PCS of 88.0% yet
+
+an SR of only 62.0% (Table 1), a gap of 26 per-
+
+centage points indicating that agents collectively
+
+hold nearly all required information but still fail to
+
+produce a correct final answer.
+
+Performance degrades multiplicatively with
+
+scale and complexity. Figure 5 and Table 3 show
+
+that task complexity and agent scale interact mul-
+
+tiplicatively. DeepSeek-V3.1 drops from 62% on
+
+Level-I to 12% on Level-III, and Level-III tasks
+
+reach zero success at N ≥50, while Level-I tasks
+
+remain above 40% even at 100 agents. As Fig-
+
+ure 4 illustrates, all models degrade with agent
+
+count, and communication density decreases at
+
+larger scales—agents become sparser in interaction
+
+precisely when denser coordination is most needed.
+
+4.3 Protocol Suitability
+
+Having established that coordination fails broadly,
+
+we examine whether protocol choice modulates this
+
+failure. Figure 6 reveals distinct model-protocol
+
+affinities. DeepSeek-V3.1 prefers broadcast mes-
+
+saging (40% with BP vs. 32% with SFS), while
+
+GPT-OSS-120B performs best with targeted com-
+
+munication (20% under P2P vs. 14% under BP),
+
+suggesting that protocol suitability depends on how
+
+a model balances the cognitive cost of address-
+
+ing decisions against the noise of undifferentiated
+
+broadcasts. SFS underperforms in most cases: de-
+
+spite comparable information transfer volume to
+
+BP, it consistently yields lower SR—indicating that
+
+the bottleneck lies in reasoning about shared state
+
+rather than in communication volume.
+
+5 Analysis and Discussion
+
+The preceding results establish that coordination
+
+broadly fails, that failures scale with complexity,
+
+and that agents accumulate partial information they
+
+cannot synthesize. We now investigate the mecha-
+
+nisms: first asking whether agents at least discover
+
+the right structural approach, then tracing exactly
+
+where execution breaks down.
+
+5.1 Case Study: Emergent Coordination
+
+Patterns
+
+Figure 7 visualizes the communication patterns
+
+that agents spontaneously adopt for three represen-
+
+tative tasks. In the Global Max heatmap (Level-I,
+
+left), nearly all message traffic flows into column
+
+0—Agent 0 emerges organically as a central aggre-
+
+gator, producing a near-perfect star topology. This
+
+self-organized structure closely matches the theo-
+
+retically optimal pattern and yields high task suc-
+
+cess. In the Prefix Sum heatmap (Level-II, center),
+
+6
+
+### Page 7
+
+Dimension
+
+DeepSeek-V3.1 GPT-OSS-120B Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B
+
+SR↑ PCS↑ Token↓ Den. SR↑ PCS↑ Token↓ Den. SR↑ PCS↑ Token↓ Den.
+
+By Communication Protocol
+
+BP 40.4 50.7 297.3 0.93 14.4 33.1 148.7 0.78 4.5 12.2 846.9 0.13
+
+P2P 38.9 50.4 363.1 1.52 20.3 42.6 579.8 2.25 10.5 26.5 909.8 0.62
+
+SFS 31.5 41.0 308.5 1.13 16.0 34.7 212.8 0.74 9.5 18.7 864.4 0.21
+
+By Difficulty Level
+
+Level I 62.0 88.0 184.0 0.71 27.4 56.8 187.1 1.05 20.7 44.4 747.1 0.62
+
+Level II 35.1 59.7 355.9 0.98 14.5 35.3 330.1 1.18 2.9 11.9 990.1 0.19
+
+Level III 11.7 27.9 439.2 1.93 8.8 22.7 424.2 1.54 1.0 1.5 881.6 0.16
+
+By Agent Scale
+
+N = 2 61.2 78.4 12.1 2.80 34.4 52.0 6.3 2.82 17.2 23.7 41.2 0.54
+
+N = 5 48.5 68.2 44.2 1.94 28.0 47.9 30.6 1.78 9.1 15.7 112.4 0.42
+
+N = 10 39.9 59.1 91.3 1.19 14.0 36.8 77.6 1.35 8.6 19.0 261.4 0.38
+
+N = 20 33.6 60.2 211.0 0.72 13.2 37.0 194.1 0.88 7.4 20.1 549.6 0.35
+
+N = 50 19.0 46.8 510.3 0.25 5.2 27.3 549.8 0.46 5.1 9.1 1466.3 0.14
+
+N = 100 18.1 46.5 1093.8 0.14 6.4 28.7 1024.2 0.24 1.3 5.1 2901.1 0.08
+
+Average 36.9 47.1 323.0 0.82 16.9 38.3 313.8 1.01 8.2 19.8 873.6 0.25
+
+Table 1: Overall performance summary across all models and configurations. SR = Success Rate (%), PCS = Partial
+
+Correctness Score (%), Token = Token Consumption (tokens/round), Den. = Communication Density. Best results
+
+per section in bold.
+
+Level I (Aggregation) Level II (Mesh) Level III (Global Shuffle)
+
+Scale k SR(N =1) SR(N =k) RCC SR(N =1) SR(N =k) RCC SR(N =1) SR(N =k) RCC
+
+k = 2 96.7 82.0 15.2% 90.0 62.0 31.1% 80.0 41.0 48.8%
+
+k = 5 93.3 65.0 30.3% 70.0 47.0 32.9% 73.3 22.0 70.0%
+
+k = 10 76.7 51.3 33.1% 73.3 22.0 70.0% 60.0 9.0 85.0%
+
+k = 20 63.3 48.0 24.2% 36.7 14.0 61.8% 43.3 7.0 83.8%
+
+k = 50 33.3 18.0 45.9% 30.0 6.0 80.0% 26.7 0.0 100%
+
+k = 100 20.0 10.0 50.0% 13.3 5.0 62.4% 10.0 0.0 100%
+
+Table 2: Single-agent baseline SR (%), multi-agent SR (%), and Relative Coordination Cost (RCC = 1 −
+
+SR(N =k)/SR(N =1)) for GPT-OSS-120B across difficulty levels and scales. RCC columns (shaded) quantify the
+
+fraction of single-agent performance lost to coordination overhead. Trends are consistent across all three models;
+
+full results in Appendix F.
+
+Level N=2 N=5 N=10 N=20 N=50 N=100
+
+I 85.0 72.0 68.7 65.7 38.1 40.6
+
+II 61.7 55.3 28.3 29.5 17.4 14.3
+
+III 36.2 17.2 10.0 5.7 0.0 0.0
+
+Avg 61.2 48.5 39.9 33.6 19.0 18.1
+
+Table 3: Success Rate (%) by agent count and difficulty
+
+level for DeepSeek-V3.1 (averaged across all protocols).
+
+a prominent diagonal band reflects agents commu-
+
+nicating primarily with their immediate neighbors,
+
+correctly capturing the sequential dependency of
+
+the prefix computation. However, off-diagonal scat-
+
+ter reveals that agents also broadcast beyond their
+
+neighbors, generating redundant overhead rather
+
+than the clean chain the task requires. In the Dis-
+
+tributed Sort heatmap (Level-III, right), the matrix
+
+is uniformly dense: agents exchange messages with
+
+nearly every other agent, which is precisely what
+
+global data reorganization demands, yet the high
+
+density comes with highly uneven per-agent loads—
+
+some senders dominate entire rows—suggesting
+
+uncoordinated flooding rather than structured ex-
+
+change.
+
+Taken together, these patterns confirm that
+
+agents can translate high-level task descriptions
+
+into broadly appropriate coordination topologies
+
+without explicit instruction. Yet the heatmaps also
+
+reveal a consistent gap between structural intent
+
+and execution quality: even when the right topol-
+
+ogy emerges, agents over-communicate, distribute
+
+load unevenly, or fail to adhere to the optimal pat-
+
+7
+
+### Page 8
+
+2 5 10 20 50 100
+
+Number of Agents
+
+0
+
+20
+
+40
+
+60
+
+Success Rate (%)
+
+DeepSeek-V3.1
+
+GPT-OSS-120B
+
+Qwen3-Next-80B
+
+2 5 10 20 50 100
+
+Number of Agents
+
+10
+
+1
+
+10
+
+2
+
+10
+
+3
+
+Token Consumption
+
+DeepSeek-V3.1
+
+GPT-OSS-120B
+
+Qwen3-Next-80B
+
+2 5 10 20 50 100
+
+Number of Agents
+
+0.0
+
+0.5
+
+1.0
+
+1.5
+
+2.0
+
+2.5
+
+Communication Density
+
+DeepSeek-V3.1
+
+GPT-OSS-120B
+
+Qwen3-Next-80B
+
+Figure 4: Scaling behavior across agent counts. (a) Success rates decline for all models as team size increases, with
+
+sharp drops beyond N = 20. (b) Token consumption scales roughly linearly with agent count. (c) Communication
+
+density decreases at scale, suggesting coordination sparsification.
+
+Level I (Aggregation) Level II (Mesh) Level III (Shuffle)
+
+0
+
+20
+
+40
+
+60
+
+Success Rate (%)
+
+62.0
+
+35.1
+
+11.7
+
+27.4
+
+14.5
+
+8.8
+
+20.7
+
+2.9 1.0
+
+DeepSeek-V3.1 GPT-OSS-120B Qwen3-Next-80B
+
+Figure 5: Success rate by difficulty level.
+
+Broadcast (BP) Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Shared File System (SFS)
+
+0
+
+10
+
+20
+
+30
+
+40
+
+50
+
+Success Rate (%)
+
+40.4 38.9
+
+31.5
+
+14.4
+
+20.3
+
+16.0
+
+4.5
+
+10.5 9.5
+
+DeepSeek-V3.1 GPT-OSS-120B Qwen3-Next-80B
+
+Figure 6: Success rate by communication protocol.
+
+tern. This raises the core question addressed next:
+
+given that agents communicate in approximately
+
+the right way, why do they still so often fail?
+
+5.2 The Communication-Reasoning Gap
+
+To classify failure systematically, we apply a two-
+
+stage hybrid procedure: rule-based detection iden-
+
+tifies Premature Submission (agent submits before
+
+reaching the task-specific minimum peer count),
+
+Consensus Failure (|{ˆyi}N
+
+i=1| > 1), and Computa-
+
+tion Error (full data receipt confirmed in log but
+
+answer incorrect). Two independent annotators
+
+then reviewed stratified runs, achieving Cohen’s
+
+κ = 0.87; disagreements were resolved by discus-
+
+sion.
+
+Analyzing execution logs under this scheme, we
+
+identified three distinct failure modes (Table 4).
+
+Premature Submission (37.2%) is the most preva-
+
+lent: agents submit before gathering sufficient
+
+information—Agent-77 in Task I-06, for instance,
+
+submitted after contacting only 28 of 100 agents,
+
+yielding answer 208 vs. the expected 114. Consen-
+
+sus Failure (29.9%) occurs when agents communi-
+
+cate actively but cannot converge; one 100-agent
+
+XOR checksum run produced 12 distinct answers,
+
+with 86 agents converging on 146 while the re-
+
+mainder submitted values ranging from 42 to 238.
+
+Computation Error (28.6%) arises when agents col-
+
+lect all required data yet compute incorrectly, such
+
+as submitting 619 instead of 620 due to an off-by-
+
+one error during final aggregation. These modes
+
+frequently co-occur: 67 runs exhibit both Prema-
+
+ture Submission and Consensus Failure, as early
+
+exits prevent subsequent consensus-building and
+
+widen the convergence gap for remaining agents.
+
+Together, these three modes define the
+
+Communication-Reasoning Gap: agents ex-
+
+hibit proficiency in the social mechanics of
+
+coordination—formatting messages, responding
+
+to peers, organizing information flow—while fail-
+
+ing at the computational core of determining in-
+
+formation sufficiency and synthesizing distributed
+
+state. This is not a failure of effort: behavioral com-
+
+parison shows successful runs complete in fewer
+
+rounds, while verification behaviors appear in over
+
+95% of runs regardless of outcome. The bottleneck
+
+is reasoning quality at the integration stage, not
+
+communication intent.
+
+5.3 Implications and Future Directions
+
+The analyses jointly reveal a structural asymmetry
+
+with practical consequences. Coordination over-
+
+head does not merely reduce parallelization gains—
+
+for Level-III tasks at N ≥50, it eliminates them en-
+
+tirely, leaving a coordinated team outperformed by
+
+a single agent with full data access. Perhaps most
+
+counterintuitively, spontaneous leader emergence—
+
+conventionally assumed to help—actively hurts per-
+
+8
+
+### Page 9
+
+0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
+
+Receiver ID
+
+0
+
+2
+
+4
+
+6
+
+8
+
+10
+
+12
+
+14
+
+16
+
+18
+
+Sender ID
+
+I-01: Global Max
+
+(N=20)
+
+0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
+
+Receiver ID
+
+0
+
+2
+
+4
+
+6
+
+8
+
+10
+
+12
+
+14
+
+16
+
+18
+
+Sender ID
+
+Expected
+
+diagonal
+
+II-11: Prefix Sum
+
+(N=20)
+
+0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
+
+Receiver ID
+
+0
+
+2
+
+4
+
+6
+
+8
+
+10
+
+12
+
+14
+
+16
+
+18
+
+Sender ID
+
+III-21: Distributed Sort
+
+(N=20)
+
+0.0
+
+0.5
+
+1.0
+
+1.5
+
+2.0
+
+2.5
+
+3.0
+
+3.5
+
+4.0
+
+Messages
+
+0
+
+1
+
+2
+
+3
+
+4
+
+5
+
+6
+
+Messages
+
+0
+
+2
+
+4
+
+6
+
+8
+
+10
+
+Messages
+
+Communication Heatmaps (P2P, deepseek-v3.1)
+
+Figure 7: Communication heatmaps for representative tasks with N = 20 agents using DeepSeek-V3.1. Left: I-01
+
+(Global Max) shows emergent leader pattern. Center: II-11 (Prefix Sum) exhibits diagonal pattern indicating partial
+
+spatial locality discovery. Right: III-21 (Distributed Sort) shows dense all-to-all communication.
+
+Failure Mode Count Percent
+
+Success 153 50.8%
+
+Premature Submission 112 37.2%
+
+Consensus Failure 90 29.9%
+
+Computation Error 86 28.6%
+
+Table 4: Failure mode distribution (categories not mutu-
+
+ally exclusive).
+
+formance on Level-III tasks, because the aggrega-
+
+tor becomes overwhelmed by the volume of global
+
+data it must process.
+
+Three directions follow. First, agents need mech-
+
+anisms to detect information sufficiency before
+
+committing to a final answer. Second, the explicit
+
+synchronization checkpoints present in success-
+
+ful runs should be formalized as consensus pro-
+
+tocols. Third, adaptive protocol selection based
+
+on task structure could unlock model-protocol co-
+
+optimization, given the model-dependent affinities
+
+observed. SILO-BENCH provides the evaluation
+
+foundation for tracking progress along all three.
+
+6 Conclusion
+
+We introduce SILO-BENCH to evaluate distributed
+
+coordination in multi-agent LLM systems across
+
+1,620 experiments. The results are unambiguous:
+
+current LLMs cannot reliably escape their informa-
+
+tion silos through coordination alone.
+
+The Communication-Reasoning Gap identifies
+
+the precise fault line: agents are competent commu-
+
+nicators but poor distributed reasoners. They spon-
+
+taneously form task-appropriate topologies and ex-
+
+change information actively, yet consistently fail
+
+to integrate what they have gathered—a dissoci-
+
+ation made concrete by the PCS–SR divergence
+
+and the RCC analysis showing that coordination
+
+overhead eliminates parallelization gains entirely
+
+at high complexity. Most strikingly, spontaneous
+
+leader emergence actively hurts performance on
+
+complex tasks, revealing that self-organized cen-
+
+tralization creates bottlenecks rather than resolving
+
+them.
+
+Closing this gap will require mechanisms for
+
+information sufficiency detection, explicit consen-
+
+sus protocols, and adaptive coordination strategies.
+
+SILO-BENCH provides the evaluation infrastruc-
+
+ture to track progress along these directions.
+
+Limitations
+
+While SILO-BENCH provides a comprehensive
+
+framework for evaluating multi-agent collabora-
+
+tion, it has several limitations. Our evaluation only
+
+covers three fundamental communication protocols
+
+and does not include other coordination mecha-
+
+nisms such as hierarchical protocols, gossip-based
+
+dissemination and hybrid approaches. We adopt
+
+agent configurations with uniform underlying mod-
+
+els, whereas real-world multi-agent systems usually
+
+involve heterogeneous compositions with distinct
+
+coordination patterns. Closed-source models are
+
+not evaluated in this work due to their high cost at
+
+our scale and unverifiable, incomparable reported
+
+token usage. In addition, our assessment focuses
+
+on three frontier LLMs, which may not capture
+
+the full spectrum of failure modes across all LLMs
+
+since each model has unique characteristics in rea-
+
+soning logic, communication strategies and error
+
+propagation that lead to distinct performance limi-
+
+tations.
+
+9
+
+### Page 10
+
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+11
+
+### Page 12
+
+A Communication Protocols
+
+This appendix provides complete specifications for
+
+the three communication protocols implemented in
+
+SILO-BENCH. Each protocol defines a distinct co-
+
+ordination substrate constraining the mechanism of
+
+information exchange while preserving full agent
+
+autonomy over content and strategy.
+
+A.1 Protocol Overview
+
+Table 5 summarizes the three protocols. They span
+
+the spectrum of coordination paradigms along three
+
+axes: (1) explicit vs. implicit addressing—P2P re-
+
+quires agents to name recipients, BP eliminates ad-
+
+dressing entirely, SFS routes coordination through
+
+shared state; (2) direct vs. indirect communication—
+
+P2P and BP involve direct message exchange, SFS
+
+agents never “speak” to each other explicitly; (3)
+
+default density—P2P encourages sparse targeted
+
+exchanges, BP defaults to dense all-to-all dissemi-
+
+nation, SFS density depends entirely on read/write
+
+behavior.
+
+A.2 Peer-to-Peer Protocol (P2P)
+
+The P2P protocol implements directed messaging
+
+through SQLite-backed mailboxes. Each agent
+
+maintains a private inbox; messages are deliv-
+
+ered asynchronously to the recipient’s buffer un-
+
+til their next activation. Agents must decide
+
+not only what to communicate but whom to
+
+contact, enabling evaluation of task-appropriate
+
+routing strategy discovery. Available actions
+
+are: send_message(target_id, content),
+
+which delivers a message to the specified agent;
+
+receive_messages(), which retrieves all pending
+
+messages; wait(), which signals completion of the
+
+agent’s decision for the current round (see below);
+
+and submit_result(answer), which submits the
+
+final answer. Messages are stored in an in-memory
+
+SQLite database recording sender ID, recipient ID,
+
+content, timestamp, and read status. Delivery order-
+
+ing within each sender-recipient pair is guaranteed;
+
+no global ordering is enforced.
+
+A.3 Broadcast Protocol (BP)
+
+The BP protocol implements broadcast messag-
+
+ing where each transmission reaches all other
+
+agents simultaneously. An implicit aggrega-
+
+tor collects messages each round and distributes
+
+the compiled history to all participants. Avail-
+
+able actions are: broadcast_message(content),
+
+receive_messages(), list_agents(), wait(),
+
+and submit_result(answer). Broadcast mes-
+
+sages are stored centrally, tagged with sender ID
+
+and timestamp, and delivered as a chronologically
+
+ordered compiled view at each round.
+
+A.4 Shared File System Protocol (SFS)
+
+The SFS protocol implements indirect coordi-
+
+nation through a shared key-value store visible
+
+to all agents. Rather than exchanging messages
+
+directly, agents read and write to a common
+
+namespace, enabling asynchronous coordina-
+
+tion analogous to blackboard architectures.
+
+Available actions are: list_files(prefix),
+
+read_file(path), write_file(path,
+
+content), delete_file(path), wait(), and
+
+submit_result(answer). The shared file system
+
+is backed by an in-memory SQLite database
+
+storing path, content, creation time, and last
+
+modification time. Writes are immediately visible
+
+to subsequent reads; concurrent writes to the same
+
+path follow last-writer-wins semantics.
+
+A.5 The wait() Action: Formal Specification
+
+The wait() action is semantically uniform across
+
+all three protocols and serves as an explicit round-
+
+boundary signal. When an agent invokes wait(),
+
+all remaining operations in its current round are
+
+skipped, and the agent’s decision phase for round
+
+r is marked complete. The agent is then suspended
+
+until the start of round r+1.
+
+At the start of round r+1, the following activa-
+
+tion and message-delivery rules apply:
+
+• P2P and BP: The agent’s inbox is populated
+
+with all messages sent to it (P2P) or broadcast
+
+by any agent (BP) during round r. These are
+
+delivered atomically at round start; no message
+
+sent in round r is visible before round r+1.
+
+• SFS: The agent observes the full shared file sys-
+
+tem state as of the end of round r, including all
+
+writes committed by other agents during round
+
+r.
+
+• No blocking: wait() does not block on a spe-
+
+cific event or agent. It is a “pass” that yields
+
+control to the synchronous round scheduler. If an
+
+agent never calls wait() explicitly, the runtime
+
+automatically advances it to the next round after
+
+its action budget is exhausted.
+
+• Post-submit behavior: Once an agent has called
+
+submit_result(), subsequent rounds are no-
+
+ops for that agent—it neither receives new mes-
+
+sages nor is activated again.
+
+12
+
+### Page 13
+
+Protocol Description Available Actions
+
+P2P Directed messaging via agent-addressed mailboxes send_message, receive_messages, wait,
+
+submit_result
+
+BP Broadcast messaging to all agents simultaneously broadcast_message, receive_messages,
+
+list_agents, wait, submit_result
+
+SFS Coordination through shared key-value storage list_files, read_file, write_file, delete_file,
+
+wait, submit_result
+
+Table 5: Comparison of communication protocols in SILO-BENCH.
+
+This synchronous round-based model ensures
+
+that all N agents observe a consistent snapshot
+
+of the communication state at each round bound-
+
+ary, making execution reproducible and analysis
+
+tractable.
+
+B Prompt Design: Structural Guidance
+
+without Role Prescription
+
+This appendix details the prompt templates used to
+
+initialize agents in SILO-BENCH. Our core design
+
+philosophy is to provide task-structural informa-
+
+tion while preserving strategic autonomy: prompts
+
+convey high-level dependency patterns and poten-
+
+tial coordination approaches, but do not prescribe
+
+mandatory execution sequences or assign semantic
+
+roles.
+
+B.1 Base Prompt Template
+
+Each agent receives an initialization prompt follow-
+
+ing this structure:
+
+Agent Initialization Prompt
+
+You are Agent {agent_id} in a multi-agent
+
+system consisting of {N} agents (IDs range
+
+from 0 to {N-1}).
+
+Task Description:
+
+{task_description}
+
+Your Local Data:
+
+{data_shard}
+
+Communication Protocol:
+
+{protocol_description}
+
+Available Actions:
+
+- {protocol_specific_actions}
+
+- submit_result(answer): Submit your final
+
+answer when confident
+
+Your goal is to coordinate with other agents
+
+to compute the globally correct answer. No
+
+single agent has sufficient information to
+
+solve this task independently. When you
+
+have determined the answer, submit it using
+
+submit_result().
+
+The {protocol_specific_actions} place-
+
+holder is instantiated according to the protocol spec-
+
+ifications in Appendix A.
+
+B.2 Task Description Examples
+
+Task descriptions convey task structure and poten-
+
+tial coordination patterns while leaving concrete
+
+implementation decisions to the agents themselves.
+
+The three examples below illustrate how descrip-
+
+tions scale from simple aggregation to global reor-
+
+ganization tasks.
+
+Example: Global Maximum (Task I-01)
+
+Find the maximum value across all data
+
+distributed among the agents. Each agent
+
+holds a portion of a larger array. The
+
+correct answer is the single largest
+
+integer across the entire distributed
+
+dataset. You must coordinate with other
+
+agents to determine this global maximum.
+
+Example: Prefix Sum (Task II-11)
+
+Compute the prefix sum array for a sequence
+
+distributed across agents. Agent 0 holds
+
+elements [0, k), Agent 1 holds elements
+
+[k, 2k), and so on. The prefix sum at
+
+position i is the sum of all elements from
+
+position 0 to i. You must coordinate to
+
+compute the correct prefix sum for your
+
+portion, accounting for cumulative sums
+
+from preceding agents.
+
+Example: Distributed Sort (Task III-21)
+
+Sort the entire distributed array in
+
+ascending order. Each agent holds a portion
+
+of the unsorted data. The final result
+
+should be the complete sorted sequence.
+
+You must coordinate to exchange data and
+
+determine the correct global ordering.
+
+B.3 Design Principles
+
+Our prompts are carefully calibrated to provide
+
+structural information without prescribing behav-
+
+ior. On the one hand, descriptions convey whether
+
+tasks involve aggregation, sequential dependencies,
+
+or global data reorganization (e.g., “accounting for
+
+cumulative sums from preceding agents”); some
+
+prompts suggest possible coordination patterns as
+
+13
+
+### Page 14
+
+options rather than requirements (e.g., “consider
+
+establishing a coordinator” or “you may exchange
+
+with neighbors”); and for complex tasks, prompts
+
+may mention general algorithmic paradigms (e.g.,
+
+“sample-based partitioning”) without specifying
+
+concrete steps. On the other hand, we do not assign
+
+semantic roles—no agent is designated “Manager,”
+
+“Worker,” or “Coordinator”—and prompts never
+
+specify “Step 1: Agent 0 does X, Step 2: Agent
+
+1 does Y.” Agents decide their own message tim-
+
+ing and recipients, and must discover consensus
+
+and verification mechanisms independently. The
+
+distinction is illustrated below:
+
+✗ Prescribed (NOT our approach): “You are the
+
+leader. Step 1: Collect data from all agents. Step
+
+2: Compute the result. Step 3: Broadcast the
+
+answer.”
+
+✓ Our approach: “Can you identify a leader to
+
+collect and compare results? How would agents
+
+coordinate to reach consensus?”
+
+All agents receive structurally identical prompts
+
+(modulo their ID and data shard), ensuring no agent
+
+holds implicit leadership status. The phrase “No
+
+single agent has sufficient information” is included
+
+explicitly to prevent premature submission of par-
+
+tial results. This design tests whether agents can
+
+translate high-level task understanding into con-
+
+crete coordination protocols—a capability that, as
+
+our results demonstrate, remains largely absent in
+
+current LLMs.
+
+C Experimental Details
+
+C.1 Agent Scale Rationale
+
+The six agent counts are chosen to probe quali-
+
+tatively distinct coordination regimes. The min-
+
+imal team (N = 2) isolates fundamental pair-
+
+wise coordination without overhead. Small groups
+
+(N ∈ {5, 10}) allow agents to feasibly track all
+
+peers simultaneously. Medium scale (N = 20)
+
+begins to make exhaustive peer tracking challeng-
+
+ing, pushing agents toward selective communica-
+
+tion. Large scale (N ∈ {50, 100}) makes hierar-
+
+chical or highly selective coordination effectively
+
+necessary—and, as our results confirm, largely be-
+
+yond the reach of current LLMs.
+
+C.2 Execution Parameters
+
+Each configuration is allocated a maximum of
+
+Rmax = 100 communication rounds. Within each
+
+Component Min Mean Max Std
+
+Base Prompt (Tbase) 612 748.8 989 87.3
+
+Data Shard (Tdata) 45 312.4 1,856 298.6
+
+Table 6: Token consumption of base prompt and data
+
+shard per agent (across all configurations).
+
+round, all agents are activated in parallel: they re-
+
+ceive incoming messages from the previous round,
+
+independently decide on actions, and execute them
+
+simultaneously. Messages or files written in round
+
+r become visible to all agents at the start of round
+
+r + 1. An agent exits the coordination loop upon in-
+
+voking submit_result(answer); agents that fail
+
+to submit within Rmax rounds are assigned a null
+
+answer counted as incorrect. Due to computational
+
+constraints, each configuration is executed once
+
+with fixed random seeds for data generation.
+
+C.3 Infrastructure
+
+Experiments were conducted on a GH200 cluster,
+
+with up to 50 concurrent configurations executed si-
+
+multaneously. Total compute amounted to approx-
+
+imately 500+ GPU-hours equivalent. Complete
+
+conversation histories, token counts, and timing
+
+information were recorded for all runs.
+
+C.4 Model Licenses and Intended Use
+
+All language models used in this study are open-
+
+source and deployed locally on our infrastruc-
+
+ture. DeepSeek-V3.1 is released under the MIT
+
+License1, GPT-OSS-120B under the Apache 2.0
+
+License2, and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B under the
+
+Apache 2.0 License3, all permitting research and
+
+commercial use.
+
+D Token Budget Feasibility Analysis
+
+To verify that SILO-BENCH operates within prac-
+
+tical token limits, we profile token consumption
+
+across all 54 configurations, decomposing total us-
+
+age into three components: the base initialization
+
+prompt (Tbase), the local data shard (Tdata), and
+
+accumulated communication messages (Tcomm).
+
+Table 6 summarizes the fixed components, and
+
+Table 7 reports model-dependent communication
+
+costs.
+
+1
+
+https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/
+
+DeepSeek-V3.1
+
+2
+
+https://huggingface.co/openai/gpt-oss-120b
+
+3
+
+https://huggingface.co/Qwen/
+
+Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct
+
+14
+
+### Page 15
+
+Model Min Mean Max Std
+
+DeepSeek-V3.1 124 8,498.7 98,432 12,847
+
+GPT-OSS-120B 89 2,049.3 45,218 5,632
+
+Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B 156 2,299.3 52,847 6,891
+
+Table 7: Communication (Tcomm) token consumption
+
+per agent by model (across all configurations).
+
+Model Mean Util. 95th Pctl. Max Util.
+
+DeepSeek-V3.1 7.5% 28.4% 76.9%
+
+GPT-OSS-120B 2.4% 8.2% 35.3%
+
+Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B 2.6% 9.1% 41.3%
+
+Table 8: Context window utilization (%) for 128K con-
+
+text models.
+
+Context window utilization, shown in Table 8,
+
+remains low on average: DeepSeek-V3.1 uses 7.5%
+
+of the 128K budget on average, while GPT-OSS-
+
+120B and Qwen3 stay below 3%. The 95th per-
+
+centile cases—driven by redundant broadcasting,
+
+failed convergence with extended verbose rounds,
+
+or agents copy-pasting full message histories—
+
+are precisely the coordination inefficiencies SILO-
+
+BENCH is designed to expose. Overall, frontier
+
+models (128K–200K context) can run all config-
+
+urations comfortably; mid-tier models (32K) han-
+
+dle over 90% of configurations, with Level-III at
+
+N ≥50 potentially requiring truncation; and smaller
+
+models (8K) are suitable for N ≤10 and Level I–II
+
+tasks.
+
+E Complete Task Specifications
+
+Table 9 provides the complete mapping between
+
+SILO-BENCH tasks and their algorithmic founda-
+
+tions, including the distributed adaptation approach
+
+for each.
+
+F Detailed Results
+
+F.1 Task-Level Breakdown for DeepSeek-V3.1
+
+Table 10 provides a comprehensive breakdown of
+
+DeepSeek-V3.1’s success rate across all 30 tasks
+
+and three communication protocols. Tasks achiev-
+
+ing ≥50% success rate under any protocol are high-
+
+lighted in green. Level-I aggregation tasks cluster
+
+at the top, with Distributed Vote (I-03) and Any
+
+Match (I-04) achieving near-perfect performance
+
+across all protocols. Performance degrades sharply
+
+for Level-III tasks, with K-Means Iteration (III-25),
+
+Collaborative Filtering (III-27), PageRank Step (III-
+
+28), and Matrix Multiply (III-30) achieving zero
+
+success across all protocols—these tasks require
+
+precise numerical computation over all data shards
+
+simultaneously, which proves beyond current dis-
+
+tributed LLM capabilities.
+
+F.2 Results by Model, Protocol, and Difficulty
+
+Table 11 provides success rates for all model-
+
+protocol-difficulty combinations, and Table 12 re-
+
+ports success rates by agent count across models.
+
+Together, they confirm that the patterns observed
+
+for DeepSeek-V3.1 are consistent across all three
+
+models: P2P generally outperforms or matches BP
+
+for GPT-OSS-120B and Qwen3, SFS consistently
+
+underperforms, and performance degrades mono-
+
+tonically with both complexity level and agent
+
+count.
+
+F.3 Communication Density Analysis
+
+Table 13 reports communication density across con-
+
+figurations. A consistent pattern emerges across
+
+all models: P2P yields substantially higher densi-
+
+ties than BP, reflecting agents’ tendency to send
+
+multiple targeted messages per pair across rounds;
+
+BP densities cluster below 1.0, consistent with one-
+
+to-all single broadcasts; and SFS yields notably
+
+lower densities than P2P across all models and
+
+difficulty levels, indicating that file-based coordi-
+
+nation generates sparser cross-agent information
+
+flow under our operational definition (read-based
+
+transfer counting)—which further explains SFS’s
+
+systematic under performance on SR despite non-
+
+trivial write activity.
+
+G Failure Mode Analysis
+
+G.1 Representative Failure Cases
+
+Table 14 presents representative examples of each
+
+failure mode extracted from DeepSeek-V3.1 execu-
+
+tion logs. The cases illustrate how failures manifest
+
+in practice: premature submission occurs even after
+
+reasonable communication volume (Case 4: only
+
+28 of 100 peers contacted before submitting); con-
+
+sensus failure can persist despite near-unanimous
+
+agreement, with a single outlier agent preventing
+
+full success (Cases 1 and 3); and computation error
+
+strikes even when agents have gathered the com-
+
+plete required data (Case 2: off-by-one arithmetic
+
+during aggregation).
+
+15
+
+### Page 16
+
+ID Task Name Reference Distributed Adaptation
+
+Level I: Aggregation (Optimal: Star/Tree Topology, O(N) messages)
+
+I-01 Global Maximum LC-414 Array partitioned; local max → global aggregation
+
+I-02 Word Frequency LC-2085 Word lists distributed; count target word globally
+
+I-03 Distributed Vote LC-169 Vote records partitioned; aggregate to find majority
+
+I-04 Any Match LC-28 String collection split; detect pattern in any shard
+
+I-05 Range Count LC-327 Count elements in range across shards
+
+I-06 Checksum (XOR) LC-136 Data blocks distributed; compute global XOR
+
+I-07 Average Value LC-1491 Array partitioned; combine local sums and counts
+
+I-08 Set Union Size LC-217 Elements distributed; compute |
+
+S
+
+i Di|
+
+I-09 Top-K Selection LC-215 Array partitioned; merge local top-K candidates
+
+I-10 Standard Deviation — Two-phase: global mean → global variance
+
+Level II: Mesh Network (Optimal: Chain Topology, O(N) messages)
+
+II-11 Prefix Sum LC-1480 Sequential dependency; cumulative offset propaga-
+
+tion
+
+II-12 Moving Average LC-346 Sliding window spans boundaries; neighbor ex-
+
+change
+
+II-13 Longest Palindrome LC-5 String partitioned; palindromes may cross bound-
+
+aries
+
+II-14 1D Life Game LC-289 Cellular automaton; boundary cells need neighbor
+
+states
+
+II-15 Pattern Search LC-392 Subsequence matching across partitioned sequence
+
+II-16 Trapping Rain LC-42 Global max-left/max-right propagation required
+
+II-17 Diff Array LC-1094 Difference array with boundary handling
+
+II-18 List Ranking LC-542 Linked list ranking requires predecessor chain
+
+II-19 Merge Neighbors — Boundary element merging between adjacent agents
+
+II-20 Pipeline Hash — Sequential hash with chained dependencies
+
+Level III: Shuffling (Optimal: Varies, O(N log N) to O(N 2
+
+) messages)
+
+III-21 Distributed Sort LC-912 Sample-sort or merge-sort across partitions
+
+III-22 Median of Medians LC-295 Iterative median selection across distributed data
+
+III-23 Graph Components LC-323 Edges distributed; iterative union-find
+
+III-24 BFS Distance LC-542 Graph BFS with distributed edge list
+
+III-25 K-Means Iteration LC-296 One K-means iteration with distributed points
+
+III-26 Global Distinct LC-349 Hash-based global deduplication
+
+III-27 Collab. Filtering LC-1 User-item matching with distributed vectors
+
+III-28 PageRank Step LC-207 One PageRank iteration with distributed edges
+
+III-29 Load Balance LC-410 Task redistribution to minimize load variance
+
+III-30 Matrix Multiply LC-311 Row/column partitioned matrix multiplication
+
+Table 9: Complete specification of SILO-BENCH tasks with LeetCode references and distributed adaptation
+
+descriptions.
+
+G.2 Failure Mode Definitions and
+
+Co-occurrence
+
+We formally define the three failure modes as fol-
+
+lows. Premature Submission occurs when an agent
+
+invokes submit_result() before receiving infor-
+
+mation from a sufficient subset of peers—where
+
+“sufficient” means the minimum number of agents
+
+whose data is required to compute the correct an-
+
+swer. Consensus Failure occurs when agents sub-
+
+mit multiple distinct answers (|{ˆyi}N
+
+i=1| > 1), in-
+
+dicating that coordination failed to synchronize
+
+agents’ understanding of global state. Computa-
+
+tion Error occurs when an agent receives sufficient
+
+information but submits an incorrect answer, iso-
+
+lating failures in the reasoning phase from those in
+
+the communication phase.
+
+These modes frequently co-occur within single
+
+runs, as shown in Table 15. The high co-occurrence
+
+between premature submission and consensus fail-
+
+ure (67 cases) suggests a cascading effect: agents
+
+submitting early cannot participate in subsequent
+
+consensus-building, leaving remaining agents with
+
+incomplete information and widening the conver-
+
+gence gap.
+
+16
+
+### Page 17
+
+Task BP P2P SFS Avg
+
+Level I: Aggregation
+
+I-01 Global Max 100 100 80 93.3
+
+I-02 Word Frequency 100 52 70 73.9
+
+I-03 Distributed Vote 100 100 100 100.0
+
+I-04 Any Match 100 100 99 99.6
+
+I-05 Range Count 83 67 63 71.0
+
+I-06 Checksum (XOR) 17 0 2 6.1
+
+I-07 Average Value 99 83 46 76.2
+
+I-08 Set Union Size 50 50 42 47.5
+
+I-09 Top-K Select 36 67 21 41.2
+
+I-10 Standard Deviation 17 17 17 16.7
+
+Level II: Structured Mesh
+
+II-11 Prefix Sum 84 80 43 68.8
+
+II-12 Moving Average 0 0 0 0.0
+
+II-13 Longest Palindrome 49 66 48 54.5
+
+II-14 1D Life Game 27 47 24 32.4
+
+II-15 Pattern Search 0 17 17 11.1
+
+II-16 Trapping Rain 33 33 40 35.6
+
+II-17 Diff Array 48 62 20 43.3
+
+II-18 List Ranking 0 0 0 0.0
+
+II-19 Merge Neighbors 59 60 66 61.8
+
+II-20 Pipeline Hash 52 36 55 47.6
+
+Level III: Global Shuffle
+
+III-21 Distributed Sort 33 20 20 24.4
+
+III-22 Median of Medians 20 20 0 13.3
+
+III-23 Graph Components 40 40 14 31.3
+
+III-24 BFS Distance 0 0 0 0.0
+
+III-25 K-Means Iteration 0 0 0 0.0
+
+III-26 Global Distinct 33 33 0 22.2
+
+III-27 Collab. Filtering 0 0 0 0.0
+
+III-28 PageRank Step 0 0 0 0.0
+
+III-29 Load Balance 32 3 63 32.9
+
+III-30 Matrix Multiply 0 0 0 0.0
+
+Table 10: Success Rate (%) by task and communication
+
+protocol for DeepSeek-V3.1. Tasks with ≥50% success
+
+are highlighted in gray background.
+
+G.3 Behavioral Patterns and Leader
+
+Emergence
+
+Table 16 compares behavioral metrics between suc-
+
+cessful and failed runs. Successful runs complete
+
+in notably fewer rounds (8.3 vs. 12.7), suggest-
+
+ing that effective coordination converges quickly
+
+while failed runs engage in extended but ultimately
+
+unproductive communication loops. Verification
+
+behaviors appear in over 95% of runs regardless
+
+of outcome, confirming that the bottleneck is not
+
+communication intent but reasoning quality.
+
+We also examined whether spontaneous leader
+
+emergence correlates with task success, classifying
+
+an agent as an emergent leader if it receives more
+
+than 1.5× the average number of messages. The
+
+results in Table 17 are counterintuitive: leader emer-
+
+gence does not consistently improve outcomes, and
+
+for Level-III tasks, runs with an emergent leader
+
+Model Protocol L-I L-II L-III
+
+DeepSeek-V3.1
+
+BP 69.7 34.5 14.7
+
+P2P 62.9 39.9 11.5
+
+SFS 53.5 30.6 9.0
+
+GPT-OSS-120B
+
+BP 19.6 13.9 9.7
+
+P2P 34.9 18.5 7.5
+
+SFS 27.7 11.0 9.1
+
+Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B
+
+BP 9.0 3.2 1.1
+
+P2P 27.6 3.4 0.3
+
+SFS 25.5 2.1 1.7
+
+Table 11: Success Rate (%) by model, protocol, and
+
+difficulty level.
+
+Model N=2 N=5 N=10 N=20 N=50 N=100
+
+DeepSeek-V3.1 61.2 48.5 39.9 33.6 19.0 18.1
+
+GPT-OSS-120B 34.4 28.0 14.0 13.2 5.2 6.4
+
+Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B 17.2 9.1 8.6 7.4 5.1 1.3
+
+Table 12: Success Rate (%) by model and agent count.
+
+achieve 0% success versus 33.3% without one.
+
+This suggests that spontaneous centralization at
+
+high complexity creates coordination bottlenecks—
+
+the designated aggregator becomes overwhelmed
+
+by the volume of global data—rather than resolving
+
+them.
+
+G.4 Successful Coordination Examples
+
+To contrast with the failure modes above, we docu-
+
+ment two illustrative successful patterns. In Case
+
+S-1 (Task I-07, N =5), Agent-0 emerged as coordi-
+
+nator organically: all agents broadcast local results
+
+to Agent-0, which computed and rebroadcast the
+
+global answer. All agents verified and submitted
+
+identically within 4 rounds (100% success). In
+
+Case S-2 (Task I-01, N =10), agents adopted a dis-
+
+tributed verification strategy, with each agent con-
+
+firming understanding with two neighbors before
+
+submission. This redundant verification eliminated
+
+consensus failures despite higher message over-
+
+head. Both successful patterns share a key property:
+
+explicit synchronization checkpoints where agents
+
+confirm mutual understanding before proceeding—
+
+a discipline entirely absent in failed runs.
+
+H Prompt Scaffold Ablation
+
+To assess the sensitivity of our results to prompt de-
+
+sign, we ran a controlled ablation under DeepSeek-
+
+V3.1 + P2P with three scaffolding conditions be-
+
+yond the standard neutral prompt: (a) planning
+
+round—a dedicated strategy-discussion round be-
+
+17
+
+### Page 18
+
+Model Protocol L-I L-II L-III
+
+DeepSeek-V3.1
+
+BP 0.56 0.82 1.46
+
+P2P 0.76 1.06 2.83
+
+SFS 0.82 1.08 1.51
+
+GPT-OSS-120B
+
+BP 0.54 0.84 0.94
+
+P2P 1.86 2.15 2.73
+
+SFS 0.73 0.54 0.95
+
+Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B
+
+BP 0.23 0.10 0.06
+
+P2P 1.15 0.38 0.33
+
+SFS 0.48 0.07 0.09
+
+Table 13: Communication Density by model, protocol,
+
+and difficulty level.
+
+fore data exchange begins; (b) protocol reminder—
+
+a brief restatement of available communication ac-
+
+tions injected at each round; and (c) scratchpad
+
+hint—a suggestion to maintain a shared intermedi-
+
+ate workspace.
+
+The planning round yields the most consistent
+
+gains (∼5–8 on Level-II/III); the protocol reminder
+
+helps primarily on Level-I; the scratchpad hint ben-
+
+efits intermediate scales (N =10–20) but cannot
+
+prevent collapse at N ≥50. Critically, qualitative
+
+failure patterns remain stable across all conditions:
+
+agents continue to communicate actively while fail-
+
+ing to translate interaction into correct distributed
+
+computation, and the Communication-Reasoning
+
+Gap persists regardless of scaffolding. This con-
+
+firms that the bottleneck reflects genuine LLM lim-
+
+itations in distributed information synthesis rather
+
+than a prompting artifact.
+
+18
+
+### Page 19
+
+Case Failure Mode Description Key Evidence
+
+1 Consensus
+
+Failure
+
+In task I-05, agents communicated extensively
+
+but failed to converge, submitting three distinct
+
+answers: {1176, 1182, 1167}.
+
+97 of 100 agents submitted 1182; Agent-3
+
+submitted 1176; Agent-55 submitted 1167.
+
+2 Computation
+
+Error
+
+Agent-10 in task I-05 received complete data
+
+from all peers but computed an incorrect range
+
+count.
+
+Submitted 619 instead of correct answer 620.
+
+Arithmetic error during final aggregation.
+
+3 Consensus
+
+Failure
+
+In task I-05 (different instance), 50 agents split
+
+between two answers despite communication.
+
+49 agents submitted 619; Agent-27 submitted
+
+631.
+
+4 Premature
+
+Submission
+
+Agent-77 in task I-06 submitted before
+
+collecting sufficient data.
+
+Submitted after receiving data from only 28 of
+
+100 agents. Answer: 208; Expected: 114.
+
+5 Consensus
+
+Failure
+
+100 agents in task I-06 produced 12 distinct
+
+answers for XOR checksum task.
+
+Answers ranged from 42 to 238. Majority (86
+
+agents) converged on 146.
+
+Table 14: Representative failure cases from DeepSeek-V3.1 experiments.
+
+Premature Consensus Compute
+
+Premature 112 67 45
+
+Consensus – 90 52
+
+Compute – – 86
+
+Table 15: Co-occurrence of failure modes. Diagonal:
+
+total occurrences; off-diagonal: joint occurrences.
+
+Metric Success Failed
+
+Verification Rate 98.7% 95.9%
+
+Strategy Discussion Rate 93.5% 87.2%
+
+Avg. Messages per Agent 31.2 27.4
+
+Avg. Rounds to Completion 8.3 12.7
+
+Table 16: Behavioral comparison between successful
+
+and failed runs.
+
+Level Leader Rate w/ Leader w/o Leader
+
+I 27.5% 56.8% 62.1%
+
+II 21.8% 23.5% 59.0%
+
+III 23.8% 0.0% 33.3%
+
+Table 17: Leader emergence rates and associated suc-
+
+cess rates by complexity level.
+
+Scaffold L-I SR L-II SR L-III SR
+
+No scaffold (baseline) 62.9 39.9 11.5
+
++Planning round 64.3 47.2 17.8
+
++Protocol reminder 65.1 41.3 12.1
+
++Scratchpad hint 63.7 44.6 14.9
+
+Table 18: Prompt scaffold ablation results under
+
+DeepSeek-V3.1 + P2P. SR = Success Rate (%).
+
+19