How we solved concurrent write collisions and data loss in local-first multi-agent systems (LAC-Protocol)

Reddit r/AI_Agents 05/30/26, 01:30 PM Tools

local-first multi-agent concurrency write-collisions protocol lock-avoidance-cache open-source

Summary

Describes the LAC-Protocol for handling concurrent write collisions in local-first multi-agent systems, using lock-state separation and avoidance caching to prevent data loss and token waste.

Hi fellow agent developers, If you have run multiple terminal agents or concurrent agent teams, you might have faced silent data/message loss due to concurrent read-modify-write clashing on shared memories or inboxes (e.g. Anthropic's Claude Code is currently struggling with this on their open issues). To solve this, we designed LAC-Protocol (Lock-Avoidance-Cache Protocol) for local-first systems: 1. Lock-State Separation: System fcntl flock on an empty sentinel, falling back to atomic mkdir for Windows/JS Electron plugins. 2. Unix Millisecond TTL: Self-heals zombie locks after 15 mins. 3. Avoidance Caching: Blocked agents don't poll or loop (zero token waste). They write JSON payloads to temp files. The next agent that successfully holds the lock sorts them chronologically, merges them, and cleans up. I will put the GitHub repository and issue links in the comments below, in compliance with Rule 3! Let me know how you guys handle agent concurrency on local file environments.

Original Article

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