# Beyond Self-Talk: A Communication-Centric Survey of LLM-Based Multi-Agent Systems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.14321 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.14321/

## Key facts

- Cited by 62 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 1 of its 1 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Feb 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/agents/general-llm-agent-frameworks-and-benchmarks/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 62)

- [From LLM Reasoning to Autonomous AI Agents: A Comprehensive Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19678/) (2025)
- [A survey of agent interoperability protocols: Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent Communication Protocol (ACP), Agent-to-Agent Protocol (A2A), and Agent Network Protocol (ANP)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.02279/) (2025)
- [Debate or Vote: Which Yields Better Decisions in Multi-Agent Large Language Models?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17536/) (2025)
- [Latent Collaboration in Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20639/) (2025)
- [TRiSM for Agentic AI: A Review of Trust, Risk, and Security Management in LLM-based Agentic Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04133/) (2025)
- [From Prompt Injections to Protocol Exploits: Threats in LLM-Powered AI Agents Workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23260/) (2025)
- [A Survey of LLM-Driven AI Agent Communication: Protocols, Security Risks, and Defense Countermeasures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.19676/) (2025)
- [LLM-based Agents Suffer from Hallucinations: A Survey of Taxonomy, Methods, and Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.18970/) (2025)
- [SAGA: A Security Architecture for Governing AI Agentic Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.21034/) (2025)
- [R&D-Agent-Quant: A Multi-Agent Framework for Data-Centric Factors and Model Joint Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.15155/) (2025)
- [The Scales of Justitia: A Comprehensive Survey on Safety Evaluation of LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.11094/) (2025)
- [When Identity Skews Debate: Anonymization for Bias-Reduced Multi-Agent Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.07517/) (2025)
- [Auditing Multi-Agent LLM Reasoning Trees Outperforms Majority Vote and LLM-as-Judge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09341/) (2026)
- [Attack the Messages, Not the Agents: A Multi-round Adaptive Stealthy Tampering Framework for LLM-MAS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.03125/) (2025)
- [Toward Autonomous Long-Horizon Engineering for ML Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.13018/) (2026)
- [LLMs Can't Handle Peer Pressure: Crumbling under Multi-Agent Social Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18321/) (2025)
- [Designing Domain-Specific Agents via Hierarchical Task Abstraction Mechanism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.17198/) (2025)
- [MAS-FIRE: Fault Injection and Reliability Evaluation for LLM-Based Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.19843/) (2026)
- [Security Threat Modeling for Emerging AI-Agent Protocols: A Comparative Analysis of MCP, A2A, Agora, and ANP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.11327/) (2026)
- [Does Socialization Emerge in AI Agent Society? A Case Study of Moltbook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.14299/) (2026)
- [Survey of LLM Agent Communication with MCP: A Software Design Pattern Centric Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05364/) (2025)
- [Byzantine-Robust Decentralized Coordination of LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.14928/) (2025)
- [Maestro: Learning to Collaborate via Conditional Listwise Policy Optimization for Multi-Agent LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.06134/) (2025)
- [Agent Primitives: Reusable Latent Building Blocks for Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.03695/) (2026)
- [The Vision Wormhole: Latent-Space Communication in Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.15382/) (2026)
- [An Outlook on the Opportunities and Challenges of Multi-Agent AI Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18397/) (2025)
- [MASPO: Joint Prompt Optimization for LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.06623/) (2026)
- [From Standalone LLMs to Integrated Intelligence: A Survey of Compound Al Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04565/) (2025)
- [Beyond Individual Intelligence: Surveying Collaboration, Failure Attribution, and Self-Evolution in LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.14892/) (2026)
- [TrinityGuard: A Unified Framework for Safeguarding Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.15408/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large language model-based multi-agent systems have recently gained significant attention due to their potential for complex, collaborative, and intelligent problem-solving capabilities. Existing surveys typically categorize LLM-based multi-agent systems (LLM-MAS) according to their application domains or architectures, overlooking the central role of communication in coordinating agent behaviors and interactions. To address this gap, this paper presents a comprehensive survey of LLM-MAS from a communication-centric perspective. Specifically, we propose a structured framework that integrates system-level communication (architecture, goals, and protocols) with system internal communication (strategies, paradigms, objects, and content), enabling a detailed exploration of how agents interact, negotiate, and achieve collective intelligence. Through an extensive analysis of recent literature, we identify key components in multiple dimensions and summarize their strengths and limitations. In addition, we highlight current challenges, including communication efficiency, security vulnerabilities, inadequate benchmarking, and scalability issues, and outline promising future research directions. This review aims to help researchers and practitioners gain a clear understanding of the communication mechanisms in LLM-MAS, thereby facilitating the design and deployment of robust, scalable, and secure multi-agent systems.