# Joint Commitment Team

> A team of agents adopts a shared goal plus a meta-commitment to notify each other the moment the goal is achieved, impossible, or no longer relevant — so no agent wastes work after the goal state changes.

- **Category**: Agentic AI
- **Subcategory**: Multi-Agent
- **Canonical URL**: https://designpattern.fyi/patterns/joint_commitment_team/

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## Description
**Intent**: A team of agents adopts a shared goal plus the meta-commitment that each member will notify the others as soon as it believes the goal is achieved, impossible, or no longer relevant.
**Context**: Multiple agents coordinate on a shared task. Each agent has a partial view of progress. When one agent learns the goal is satisfied, infeasible, or no longer wanted, the others keep working unless explicitly notified — wasting compute on a goal that's already been resolved.
**Solution**: Following Cohen & Levesque's joint intentions framework: when agents form a team around shared goal G, each commits to (a) pursue G as long as G is believed achievable, wanted, and unachieved, and (b) notify the rest as soon as it believes G is achieved, impossible, or no longer relevant. Notification is part of the contract. The team lifecycle has explicit transitions: forming → active → satisfied (notified by any member) / impossible / abandoned (notified by the principal).



## Use Cases
- Multi-agent teams are working toward shared goals with multi-step or multi-day runtimes.
- Goal-state changes (satisfaction, infeasibility, abandonment) are realistic mid-task.
- Operators need an audit trail of when and why a team stopped working.






## Trade-offs


### Advantages

- Wasted work after a goal-state change collapses — agents stop promptly on notification.

- Team lifecycle has explicit named states that are auditable and debuggable.

- Notification messages produce a clean audit trail.




### Considerations & Drawbacks

- Notification protocol adds overhead on long-running teams.

- Members can disagree about whether the goal is achieved or impossible — needs a reconciliation rule.

- False notifications (one member wrongly concludes "impossible") can tear down the team prematurely.







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**Reference**: [Original Source](https://www.agentpatternscatalog.org/patterns/joint-commitment-team/)