What does it mean that agent dependency mapping?

Draw the dependencies between your agents to see the full coordination picture.

Example: You run a morning system with several cognitive agents: a journaling agent that clarifies your priorities, a planning agent that sequences your day, a deep-work agent that executes the first priority, and a communication agent that handles messages. You assume these run independently. But when you skip journaling, the planning agent produces a vague schedule, the deep-work agent starts on the wrong task, and the communication agent sends half-formed responses because you never identified what matters today. The failure is not in any single agent. It is in the invisible dependency chain: planning depends on journaling's output, deep work depends on planning's output, and communication quality depends on all three. Until you draw those dependencies, every disruption cascades invisibly. Once you draw them, you see exactly where every failure will propagate — and where to intervene.

Try this: List every cognitive agent you currently operate — every recurring process, routine, habit, or subsystem that runs on a regular cycle. Aim for at least eight. Now, for each agent, answer two questions: (1) What does this agent need as input before it can run effectively? (2) What does this agent produce that another agent consumes? Draw arrows from each producer to each consumer. You now have a dependency graph. Identify every agent that has three or more incoming arrows — these are your most fragile nodes, because they fail when any upstream agent fails. Identify every agent with three or more outgoing arrows — these are your most critical nodes, because their failure cascades to everything downstream.