duplicate responses

(2) Share

Report

Posted on by PS-10010955-0

I created an orchestrator and an army of child agents. I have a problem because sometimes I receive two duplicate responses (generated again, slightly different from each other, from a child agent). I’m using GenAI, and the main orchestrator has no data, so it probably isn’t generating this itself. It looks like I’m receiving it from a child agent, as if after producing an answer it doesn’t finish the task but generates it again.

AI suggestions haven’t solved the issue—things like disabling conversational boosting, etc., didn’t help. Does anyone know how to fix this? Switching topics is not possible—I need GenAI orchestration.

Categories:

Autonomous agents

I have the same question (0)

All responses (5)

Answers (0)

Sort by

Suggested answer

11manish 3,333 on at

Like
a
(1)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Duplicate responses in a multi-agent GenAI orchestration setup typically occur due to multiple agent invocations, lack of a strict completion signal, or parallel execution.

The fix is to enforce a single-response contract at the agent level, ensure deterministic routing in the orchestrator, and implement safeguards to return only the first valid response while ignoring subsequent ones.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Haque 3,653 on at

Like
a
(2)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!
Hi @PS-10010955-0,

Let's consider the scenario from two different angles/cases:

Case-1: Since your main orchestrator has no data and is not generating responses itself, the duplicate but slightly different responses from child agents may result from:

Is there any chance to happen a prallel calls to the same child agent for the same input? That may cause multiple completions.

How aggegation logic is happening in the orchestrator? A case might be lack of deduplication in the orchestrator to merge similar respoinse.

Frequncy of child agent being triggered serveral times - it may happen due to overlapping triggers or some retries in the orgchestration flow.

Unseen but may happen - transient platform retries or network glithces - that can invite repeated calls.

Case-2: The scenraio gives me an impression that the child agent is generating a response but then, instead of finishing the task, it triggers a new generation cycle—resulting in duplicate but slightly different answers. This behavior can happen if:

The child agent’s topic or flow does not have a clear end or completion condition, causing it to loop or regenerate.

There is a retry or fallback mechanism inside the child agent that triggers a second generation if it thinks the first response was incomplete or unsatisfactory.

The orchestrator or parent agent is inadvertently calling the child agent multiple times for the same input due to missing state or confirmation of completion.

The child agent’s internal logic or prompt design causes it to regenerate output before signaling task completion.

Please check these aobve items if they are causing the issues. At the first place I would recommend to look into these three checkpoints:

Ensure the child agent’s topic or flow has a definitive end step that signals completion and prevents further generation.

Add explicit state or flag checks in the orchestrator and child agents to confirm when a response is final.

Review retry or fallback settings in the child agent to avoid unnecessary re-generation.

I am sure some clues I tried to give. If these clues help to resolve the issue brought you by here, please don't forget to check the box Does this answer your question? At the same time, I am pretty sure you have liked the response!

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Valantis 6,735 on at

Like
a
(1)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Hi @PS-10010955-0,

There are two separate causes for this and both are documented.

First, a known platform behavior from Microsoft docs: in multi-agent setups where the parent agent relies entirely on sub-agents with no topics or knowledge of its own, if you set the parent agent's after-running behavior for the child agent to "Don't respond", the platform may still send an additional system-generated explanation_of_tool_call message after the child agent responds. This message comes from the orchestration runtime, not the child agent itself, and causes the double response appearance.

Fix for this: in the parent agent's connected agent settings, check the after-running behavior and change it to let the parent agent summarize the response rather than using "Don't respond".
Second cause: generative orchestration can select multiple resources for the same user intent and invoke them sequentially. If two child agents have overlapping descriptions or capabilities, the orchestrator may call both for the same question and surface both answers. Each child agent produces a response and both come through.

Fix for this: make each child agent's description and capability scope very distinct and non-overlapping. The orchestrator uses these descriptions to decide which agent to call. If two agents could both plausibly answer the same question based on their description, it will sometimes call both. Also check if any of your child agents have knowledge sources that overlap with each other.

Ref: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/authoring-add-other-agents

Best regards,

Valantis

✅ If this helped solve your issue, please Accept as Solution so others can find it quickly.

❤️ If it didn’t fully solve it but was still useful, please click “Yes” on “Was this reply helpful?” or leave a Like :).

🏷️ For follow-ups @Valantis.

📝 https://valantisond365.com/

💼 LinkedIn

▶️ YouTube

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Haque 3,653 on at

Like
a
(1)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Hi @PS-10010955-0,

Was following up on this- did these clue help you? If so please accept as Solution. If not, please let's know. Thanks.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Valantis 6,735 on at

Like
a
(1)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Hi @PS-10010955-0,

Just wanted to check in and see if everything is working now. If you still need any help, feel free to let me know.

Also, if the issue is resolved, it would be great if you could mark the answer as solved so others with the same question can find it easily.

Thanks and have a great day!

Was this reply helpful? Yes No