Multi-agent reporting pipeline (client work, anonymized)

A consultancy client, via Upwork. The pipeline takes a tabular dataset and a written brief, and produces a finished, standards-compliant Excel deliverable along with its own handoff documentation. It runs on demand, or unattended overnight, with a filesystem watcher draining a queue one job at a time.

Most multi-agent projects are three prompts in a loop. This one knows how to stop.

There are 11a stages. A quality stage dispatches 10 specialist checks across two groups, and a critical failure blocks shipping. On failure the run loops back to the build stage and tries again, up to 3 attempts, then finalizes as failed rather than pretending. An architect stage picks between a cached path for recurring report shapes and a custom build for anything else. The standards checklist the quality agents apply is also a standalone validator that can audit any completed run on its own, so verification does not depend on the agent being honest about its own work.

The same contract produced a Python automation driving Excel through COM. 312a tests pass against a hostile external process that leaks and hangs. Getting there needs a session-scoped safety net that kills orphaned processes, so one failed test cannot poison the next.