Agent Sprawl refers to the uncontrolled proliferation of AI agents in organizations without governance, leading to operational chaos and inefficiency.
When everyone builds agents and nobody keeps track.
What It Is
Agent Sprawl is the uncontrolled proliferation of AI agents in an organization - without governance, coordination, or oversight. McKinsey warns (June 2025): "What starts as intelligent automation can quickly become operational chaos - unless it is built on a foundation that prioritizes control."
The pattern is not new. We know it as shadow IT: departments buying tools without asking IT. We know it as "just talk to each other" - coordination that never happens. The same failed organizational principles, now with AI agents instead of people.
If you can't coordinate between humans, you certainly won't coordinate between agents.
How To Spot It
- Multiple teams have built agents for the same purpose without knowing about each other
- Agents are running whose creators left the team long ago - nobody knows what they do
- The number of agents has become a metric that gets proudly presented ("We have 200 agents!")
- Agents produce contradictory results because they work on different data or configurations
What To Do (FL2 - Coordination Level)
- Create visibility: Which agents run where, who is responsible, what do they do?
- Eliminate duplication: Consolidate agents doing the same thing
- Lifecycle management: Agents have an expiration date. Regularly check: is this still running? Do we still need it?
- Connect with Guardian Agents: Monitoring is the first step against sprawl
- Connect with [[Orchestrator Agent]]: Central coordination instead of distributed chaos
The Trap
Reacting by banning or centralizing agents. That's the "no shadow IT" reflex - and it has never worked. The better answer: governance that creates transparency while enabling autonomy. Not fewer agents, but better coordinated ones.