From Delegation to Coordination: Learning Efficient Multi-Agent Deep Research

Yuyang Wu, Yang Liu, Zequn Xie, Junjie Wang, Dan Yang +6

Multi-agent deep-research systems use delegation to parallelize search and keep long tool traces out of the main agent's context. Yet delegation helps only when task allocation and subtask execution are coordinated: the main agent must issue useful subtasks, while subagents must return reliable evidence. Existing training either optimizes only the main agent or broadcasts the same team advantage to all agents, which can reward misleading subagent reports and penalize useful ones. We introduce LEAD-RL (Learning Effective Agent Delegation with Reinforcement Learning), a joint main-agent-subagent training framework with contribution-aware credit assignment. A training-time rubric evaluates the research utility of each subagent report and gates its inherited team advantage, while final-answer correctness remains the only team reward; no token, step, or speedup reward is used. Across five benchmarks and two model families, LEAD-RL improves answer quality. On BrowseComp, it improves accuracy by 2.49 percentage points and reduces critical-path cost by 24.5% over joint training with shared team credit. During validation, accuracy increases by 6.78 points at approximately constant…