Why does agent ecosystem health fail?

The most common reason agent ecosystem health fails: Assessing agents individually rather than as an interacting system. This is the most common failure. You check whether your exercise habit is 'working' and whether your deep work routine is 'working' and conclude that both are fine — while ignoring that they are fighting over the same morning hours and the conflict is degrading both. Individual agent health tells you nothing about ecosystem health. A coral reef can be full of individually healthy organisms that are collectively collapsing because the relationships between them are breaking down. Your agent ecosystem follows the same logic: the health of the whole is not the sum of the health of the parts.

The fix: List every active cognitive agent you currently operate — every recurring commitment, routine, rule, habit, or automated behavior that runs with some regularity. For each one, rate three dimensions on a 1-to-5 scale: vigor (is it producing meaningful output?), organization (does it connect cleanly to other agents?), and resilience (does it recover when disrupted?). Multiply the three scores for each agent. Any agent scoring below 27 needs attention. Any agent scoring below 8 needs triage or removal. Now look at the list as a whole: where are two agents producing conflicting outputs? Where is one agent's output overwhelming another's input capacity? You have just performed your first ecosystem health assessment.

The underlying principle is straightforward: Your set of agents is an ecosystem — it needs balance and periodic assessment.