MAGIC: Mixed-Granularity Agent Graphs via Incremental Construction with Dense-Reward Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2609.26667v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Collaboration topology shapes both the performance and execution cost of LLM-based multi-agent systems. Because tasks differ in complexity and required capabilities, recent approaches generate task-specific collaboration graphs that specify agent participation and information flow. However, representative topology generators use either individual agents or predefined groups throughout an organization, overlooking differing collaboration needs across subtasks. Our key insight is to select granularity locally for each functional role, combining fine-grained control with reusable collaboration patterns within one organization. Learning such organizations requires exploring a combinatorial construction space with limited intermediate feedback from final-answer rewards. Therefore, we propose MAGIC, a dense-reward reinforcement learning framework for mixed-granularity graph generation. Specifically, MAGIC constructs a mixed-granularity agent graph by sequentially selecting a functional role, instantiating it as a single agent or reusable group, and connecting it to existing units. We directly optimize the construction policy using returns from trajectories sampled under the current policy and use potential-based reward shaping to provide intermediate feedback from probe-based utility and structural signals while preserving the cumulative task reward. MAGIC outperforms state-of-the-art baselines across eight benchmarks and demonstrates strong inference efficiency in our efficiency study.

Abstract:Collaboration topology shapes both the performance and execution cost of LLM-based multi-agent systems. Because tasks differ in complexity and required capabilities, recent approaches generate task-specific collaboration graphs that specify agent participation and information flow. However, representative topology generators use either individual agents or predefined groups throughout an organization, overlooking differing collaboration needs across subtasks. Our key insight is to select granularity locally for each functional role, combining fine-grained control with reusable collaboration patterns within one organization. Learning such organizations requires exploring a combinatorial construction space with limited intermediate feedback from final-answer rewards. Therefore, we propose MAGIC, a dense-reward reinforcement learning framework for mixed-granularity graph generation. Specifically, MAGIC constructs a mixed-granularity agent graph by sequentially selecting a functional role, instantiating it as a single agent or reusable group, and connecting it to existing units. We directly optimize the construction policy using returns from trajectories sampled under the current policy and use potential-based reward shaping to provide intermediate feedback from probe-based utility and structural signals while preserving the cumulative task reward. MAGIC outperforms state-of-the-art baselines across eight benchmarks and demonstrates strong inference efficiency in our efficiency study.

Machine Learning (cs.LG)

arXiv:2609.26667 [cs.LG]

(or arXiv:2609.26667v1 [cs.LG] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.26667 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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MAGIC: Mixed-Granularity Agent Graphs via Incremental Construction with Dense-Reward Reinforcement Learning

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