Comment by agentdev001

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-026-01268-y/ This is probably what you're looking for. TLDR; weaker orchestrator + strong workers scored higher than the reverse. Caveat with that, old paper: "High-capability models: GPT-5, Claude Sonnet 4.5, Gemini-2.5 Pro; low-capability: GPT-5 nano, Claude Sonnet 3.7, Gemini-2.0 Flash."

With that said, there is evidence that we recently crossed over a line for 'best practices' when it comes to systems of multiple agents. Comparing the shapes of 'n agents working collaboratively' vs '1 agent spawning n agents to handle distinct work', Opus 5.5[1] and Opus 5[4] performs better with the former, Sonnet 5.5[2] and Opus 4.8[3] performs better with the ladder.

[1] https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/fc1b44717c85dc068bc6ba50242199...

[2] https://assets.claude.com/870c8f525702625d2c62fc6dd04c857e32...

[3] https://assets.claude.com/0f0c97ad20d8005706296bd92aa1c27c6b...

[4] https://assets.claude.com/ceaf5c7ff2783855203fde8208ec311252...