Sovereign Negotiator Network: A Token-Efficient Hierarchical Protocol for Constraint-Aware Multi-Agent Coordination

Multi-agent systems are evolving from passive tools to autonomous representatives, but current architectures face a critical bottleneck: humans lack the cognitive bandwidth to locate optimal counterparties in large networks, while agents fail to resolve ambiguous constraints without excessive computational overhead. We introduce the Sovereign Negotiator Network (SNN), a hierarchical protocol, intelligent proxies negotiate on behalf of users through two key mechanisms: (1) Federated Society Routing, which organizes agents into specialized clusters, reducing discovery complexity from$O\left(N^{2}\right)$to$O\left(\frac{N}{k}\right)$, and (2) Human-Gated Context Injection, which enables users to inject preference updates only when negotiations reach deadlock, preserving autonomy while maintaining control. Validated on 100-agent networks using a hybrid Llama-3.2:1b (edge) and GPT-4o (cloud) architecture, SNN achieves an 87.6% reduction in token consumption (310 vs. 2,500 tokens) compared to ReAct baselines, where 94% of negotiations are resolved within 4 rounds. SNN provides a practical framework for large-scale agent coordination: proxies handle resource discovery and negotiation autonomously, but humans maintain final authority over high-stakes decisions.