Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence
[Submitted on 7 Nov 2026]
Title:Agent Architecture Cost-Success Trade-offs: A Controlled Evaluation across Enterprise-Style SOPs
View PDF HTML (experimental)Abstract:Enterprises increasingly use large language model agents to execute standard operating procedures (SOPs): long, branching, tool-intensive workflows. Yet there is little controlled evidence for choosing among competing agentic architectures. Holding the model, tasks, and tools fixed and varying only the architecture, we compare four designs (a function-calling single agent, a skill-augmented agent, centralized multi-agent orchestration, and a triage swarm; eight arms) across 13 enterprise SOPs, and introduce a skill-definition quality rubric to build matched high and low-quality skill corpora. Three takeaways emerge. (1)~\textbf{There is no universal best architecture; the right choice is SOP-dependent.} On a given SOP, task success ranges from under $10\%$ on the hardest to near $100\%$ on the easiest; no architecture is statistically separable in aggregate, and added structure only plausibly pays off on complex, branching SOPs (a directional, not yet significant, trend). (2)~\textbf{Added architecture cost must be justified by a task-success gain.} Every coordinated arm (multi-agent or skill-augmented) spends $1.4$--$4.7\times$ the tokens and $2.6$--$5.8\times$ the latency of the single agent for gains that are usually small and rarely significant, making the single agent the efficient default; high-quality skills do lift success (to $73.1\%$ from $67.4\%$) while degraded skills fall below it. (3)~\textbf{Implementation quality outweighs the single- versus multi-agent choice.} A plausible multi-agent implementation loses to the single agent, yet a targeted redesign of it becomes the only arm to significantly beat the baseline ($75.6\%$ vs.\ $67.4\%$).
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