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Agent Research Company

SERVICES / 02

Agent architecture and MCP design.

Most agentic systems entering production are architected for the demo, not for the audit. This brief is the engagement that turns a working multi-agent system into a deployable one — boundaries drawn deliberately, tool surface narrowed, decisions logged in a form a regulator can read.

Audience
Builders
Engagement formats
F-01 · F-02
Typical duration
3–6 weeks
Outputs
Architecture review document · MCP / tool boundary specification · Orchestration topology and decision-log schema · Eval harness scaffold
Last reviewed
2026-04-08

The question

Multi-agent systems collapse into single points of failure when the tool surface, the orchestrator, and the decision log were designed independently. The first ten production incidents are rarely about the model.

The right architecture for a regulated environment is one where the model's authority is bounded by what tools it can reach, what it can do with them is logged at the boundary, and the orchestrator's decisions are reviewable in retrospect without reconstructing prompts.

This brief is hands-on. It produces a written architecture, a working MCP / tool surface specification, and a decision-log schema that compliance can read.

What this produces

  1. 01A written architecture review, scoped to the system as it currently exists.
  2. 02An MCP / tool boundary specification with explicit allow-listing and rate limits.
  3. 03An orchestration topology with named agent roles and escalation rules.
  4. 04A decision-log schema with retention and review obligations.
  5. 05An eval harness scaffold tied to the obligations the system is meeting.

How it works

Three methodology steps from the standing approach, scoped to this brief.

  1. 01

    Frame

    Read the regulator filings, the codebase, or the internal memo. Write the question that is actually being asked.

  2. 02

    Build the artifact

    The artifact named in Outputs, above. Working notes during the build are visible.

  3. 03

    Hand it off

    A meeting, not a link. Six weeks of follow-up Q&A is included.

What it’s not

This is not a code-base rewrite. The brief produces specifications and reference implementations; integration is the firm's engineering team's responsibility.

This is not a vendor selection report on its own — see service 07 for vendor due diligence.

This does not replace the firm's incident response or on-call function.

Adjacent briefs

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