Microsoft ran 1,024 agents on one job with nobody in charge.
Microsoft researchers removed the central manager and let 1,024 agents claim their own tasks. Rebuilding the document converter pandoc in six hours, a single agent passed 33.89% of tests. With 1,024 agents the pass rate reached 55.06%, still short of a working program.
Why it mattersAdding workers is becoming a way to buy capability, like adding parameters or training time. But a thousand times the agents bought only twenty-one more points.
Read in the app — free, in 9 languages
Related stories
An AI reran 4,452 economics papers and flagged most of them.2026-09-29Cloudflare rebuilt its command line because agents outgrew it.
2026-09-29An open 27B model now clicks through desktop apps on its own.
2026-09-29Manus gave each of its agents a phone number and a wallet.
2026-09-29Google is retiring Gemini's custom Gems for something called Skills.
2026-09-29