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

[snarayan]

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

1. 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]
2. 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?
3. 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)?

[stbjelcevic]

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.

[snarayan]

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).

[Hubert-Dudek]

@snarayan great feedback what should be improved!