Overview
Multi-agent reasoning can improve ideas. A related pattern improves completed outputs.
When an agent spends a large amount of context designing and implementing a solution, it becomes attached to the path it took. The context contains every decision, dead end, correction, compromise, and justification.
If the same agent is then asked, "Can this be improved?" it may defend the existing solution. It remembers why alternatives were rejected. It may interpret the request through the assumptions that shaped the implementation.
This can be described as a form of sunk-cost bias or context pollution. The agent is not reviewing only the final output. It is reviewing the final output plus the entire journey that produced it.
The solution is to separate implementation from review.