The Sequence Engineering #671: How Anthropic Built a Research Agent?
Practical lessons learned from one of the premier AI labs in the world.
The Research feature in Claude represents a significant evolution in how large language models can tackle open-ended, complex research tasks. At its core lies a multi-agent architecture, in which a LeadResearcher orchestrator spawns multiple specialized Subagents to explore distinct facets of a query in parallel. This orchestrator-worker design draws inspiration from distributed computing paradigms and allows the system to achieve both breadth and depth beyond what a single-agent pipeline could accomplish. In practice, a user’s query first reaches the LeadResearcher, which deconstructs the question into a coherent research plan and assigns targeted subtasks to Subagents. Each Subagent then executes its segment—be it web search, data extraction, or analysis—concurrently, returning concise findings that the LeadResearcher later synthesizes into a unified report.