[2603.22823] Empirical Comparison of Agent Communication Protocols for Task Orchestration

Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence arXiv:2603.22823 (cs) [Submitted on 24 Mar 2026] Title:Empirical Comparison of Agent Communication Protocols for Task Orchestration Authors:Ivan Dobrovolskyi View a PDF of the paper titled Empirical Comparison of Agent Communication Protocols for Task Orchestration, by Ivan Dobrovolskyi View PDF Abstract:Context. Nowadays, artificial intelligence agent systems are transforming from single-tool interactions to complex multi-agent orchestrations. As a result, two competing communication protocols have emerged: a tool integration protocol that standardizes how agents invoke external tools, and an inter-agent delegation protocol that enables autonomous agents to discover and delegate tasks to one another. Despite widespread industry adoption by dozens of enterprise partners, no empirical comparison of these protocols exists in the literature. Objective. The goal of this work is to develop the first systematic benchmark comparing tool-integration-only, multi-agent delegation, and hybrid architectures across standardized queries at three complexity levels, and to quantify the trade-offs in response time, context window consumption, monetary cost, error recovery, and implementation complexity. Subjects: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) Cite as: arXiv:2603.22823 [cs.AI]   (or arXiv:2603.22823v1 [cs.AI] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.22823 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Subm...