Choose A2A, Delegation, or Kanban for Multi-Agent Work
Hermes offers several ways to involve more than one agent, but they solve different topology and lifetime problems. A2A is the open Agent2Agent protocol for communication across processes, machines, or frameworks. Delegation creates an isolated child inside the current Hermes process. Kanban coordinates durable work among profiles through a tracked board.
Official documentation: https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/user-guide/messaging/a2a
Start with the boundary
Use delegation when one live Hermes turn needs a focused child for research, review, or a bounded subtask. Use Kanban when work must remain visible, retryable, and assignable across profile-owned workers. Use A2A when the peer is an independent service: another Hermes on a server, a specialist agent on another machine, or a compatible agent built with another framework.
A2A does not replace local coordination. Crossing a network boundary adds endpoint discovery, authentication, timeouts, audit records, and failure modes that are unnecessary for two workers on the same host.
Decision checklist
- Are the agents in the same process, on the same machine, or genuinely remote?
- Must the work survive the parent session or gateway process?
- Does the peer own separate tools, memory, credentials, or framework state?
- Is a network protocol required for interoperability?
- Who owns retries, cancellation, and the final verification?
- Can the first test use public or synthetic information?
Common pitfalls
- Using A2A for ordinary parallel editing. A protocol connection does not prevent two agents from overwriting a shared worktree.
- Treating delegation as durable. A delegated child remains tied to its parent process.
- Treating Kanban as a remote interoperability protocol. Kanban is a Hermes work queue, not a general A2A endpoint.
- Skipping integration ownership. One agent must still verify the combined result.
Verification
Draw the actual topology and label every process, machine, credential owner, data store, and delivery path. Run one harmless round trip through the chosen mechanism, then prove where the result was stored and which agent verified it. If a same-machine option meets the requirement, prefer that smaller boundary before adding A2A.