Decoupling Thought from Speech: Knowledge-Grounded Counterfactual Reasoning for Resilient Multi-Agent Argumentation

Abstract

Multi-agent debate frameworks have been shown to improve large language model performance in convergent tasks, but they are currently optimized in a way that heavily favors final output accuracy rather than stability of the process. During long-horizon exchanges reactive systems under sustained perturbations often experience logic degradation, argument repetition, and role drift. To structurally prevent the identity loss and maintain the process fidelity, we introduce Knowledge-Grounded Counterfactual Reasoning (KG-CFR), a dual-stage architecture that enforces a strict separation of concerns between a private, retrieval-augmented planning buffer, and a public execution layer. We assess this system in Dynamic Resource Allocation under Uncertainty (DRAU), a dedicated 1v1v1 environment, introducing diversity as distinct from standard debate settings. Over 270 completely factorial crisis simulation trajectories with stochastic environmental shocks, KG-CFR prevents judge-detected critical post-shock degradation (defined as a quality shift, $Δ\le -0.20$) in more than 95% of perturbed runs, increasing the overall argument quality from 0.694 to 0.822. Our primary contribution is the demonstration of architectural decoupling being an important factor of systemic resilience enhancement under sustained pressure without quality loss. Furthermore, we introduce custom vector metrics for discourse divergence and plan-execution alignment that provide strong, directionally consistent evidence of operational stability. Our ablation experiments suggest that the proper doctrinal grounding can be an equally important factor for argument quality, as the prospective planning. KG-CFR, according to our initial metric evaluations, reduces semantic looping, by preserving the agent's consistency with the original plan.