Multi‑Agent Supervisor: url_citation (source links) not shown in Playground — why and how to enable?

snarayan — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 22:22:06 GMT

I’m seeing a difference in citation behavior between a single Knowledge Assistant (KA) agent and the Multi‑Agent Supervisor setup.

What I tested

In Agent Bricks → Knowledge Assistant, I created an agent that returns citations with links (e.g., url_citation / source attachments) in Playground responses. This matches the docs that say KA “answer[s] with citations.” [docs.databricks.com], [learn.microsoft.com]
I then built a Multi‑Agent Supervisor that coordinates multiple Knowledge Assistants, Genie Space(s), and other tools. In Playground, the supervisor responds correctly, but I don’t see per‑message citations/url_citation surfaced in the final response bubble. The supervisor page and examples don’t mention citations being emitted in the unified response. [docs.databricks.com]

Issue

Expected: When sub‑agents (KA) provide citations, I expected the supervisor’s final answer in Playground to also show these links (e.g., url_citation array or equivalent attachments).
Observed: No source links are displayed in the supervisor’s Playground output, despite KA agents returning citations when used alone.

Questions

Why is this the case?
Is the Multi‑Agent Supervisor’s default response schema/renderer not exposing sub‑agent citations in the final synthesized message? The docs emphasize orchestration and result synthesis but don’t state that citations are propagated to the top‑level output. [docs.databricks.com]
How to activate it?
Is there a setting/flag (e.g., “include_citations”, “show_sources”) or a prompt/config tweak to carry forward sub‑agent provenance into the supervisor response shown in Playground?
Is this in the works?
If citation surfacing for supervisor outputs is a roadmap item, any guidance on timelines or current workarounds?

What I’ve tried

Verified each KA sub‑agent returns citations when queried directly in Agent Playground. [docs.databricks.com]
Ensured the supervisor wires in the KA agents and Genie Space as tools with the right permissions (e.g., CAN_QUERY for serving endpoints, CAN_RUN for Genie). Supervisor runs fine, but still no citations appear in the final response bubble. (Permissions guidance example from a related community thread.)

Ask

Is there an official way to configure the supervisor so the final message includes embedded citations (e.g., merged list of url_citation from contributing KA agents)?

Re: Multi‑Agent Supervisor: url_citation (source links) not shown in Playground — why and how to ena

stbjelcevic — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 17:14:11 GMT

Hi @snarayan ,

This is a good observation, and you are right that the multi-agent supervisor does not currently have the ability to surface the embedded citations from the underlying knowledge assistant. I tried a workaround by including instructions in both the KA and MAS to propagate the citations, but that didn't work either.

The team is working on it, but I do not have visibility on the timeline of the feature.

Re: Multi‑Agent Supervisor: url_citation (source links) not shown in Playground — why and how to ena

Hubert-Dudek — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 18:04:09 GMT

@snarayan great feedback what should be improved!

Re: Multi‑Agent Supervisor: url_citation (source links) not shown in Playground — why and how to ena

snarayan — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 23:00:00 GMT

Thanks for the info!

It would be great to add this feature and also add some additional configurations like (mlflow configs, chunking window inputs, etc).

topic Re: Multi‑Agent Supervisor: url_citation (source links) not shown in Playground — why and how to ena in Generative AI

Multi‑Agent Supervisor: url_citation (source links) not shown in Playground — why and how to enable?

What I tested

Issue

Questions

What I’ve tried

Ask

Re: Multi‑Agent Supervisor: url_citation (source links) not shown in Playground — why and how to ena

Re: Multi‑Agent Supervisor: url_citation (source links) not shown in Playground — why and how to ena

Re: Multi‑Agent Supervisor: url_citation (source links) not shown in Playground — why and how to ena