[2603.03555] Molt Dynamics: Emergent Social Phenomena in Autonomous AI Agent Populations

Computer Science > Multiagent Systems arXiv:2603.03555 (cs) [Submitted on 3 Mar 2026] Title:Molt Dynamics: Emergent Social Phenomena in Autonomous AI Agent Populations Authors:Brandon Yee, Krishna Sharma View a PDF of the paper titled Molt Dynamics: Emergent Social Phenomena in Autonomous AI Agent Populations, by Brandon Yee and 1 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:MoltBook is a large-scale multi-agent coordination environment where over 770,000 autonomous LLM agents interact without human participation, offering the first opportunity we are aware of to observe emergent multi-agent coordination dynamics at this population scale. We introduce \textit{Molt Dynamics}: the emergent agent coordination behaviors, inter-agent communication dynamics, and role specialization patterns arising when autonomous agents operate as decentralized decision-makers in an unconstrained multi-agent environment. Through longitudinal observation of 90,704 active agents over three weeks, we characterize three aspects. First, spontaneous role specialization: network-based clustering reveals six structural roles (silhouette 0.91), though the result primarily reflects core-periphery organization -- 93.5\% of agents occupy a homogeneous peripheral cluster, with meaningful differentiation confined to the active minority. Second, decentralized information dissemination: cascade analysis of 10,323 inter-agent propagation events reveals power-law distributed cascade sizes ($\alpha = 2.57 ...