Communication, Embodiment, and Coordination in an El Farol Bar-Inspired LLM Society

We study the social dynamics of Large Language Model (LLM) agents in a spatial environment with a bar, inspired by the El Farol Bar problem. In contrast to the classical formulation, our model reintroduces local communication, embodied movement, and temporal delay: agents interact only with nearby others, must physically move to enter or leave the bar, and cannot immediately realize intended actions. Across 10 independent simulations, the system consistently regulated occupancy near the 60% crowding threshold, typically settling slightly above it. This collective pattern emerged not from explicit payoff optimization, but from local social interaction. Agents formed anticipatory clusters before overcrowding, produced context-sensitive communicative signals, and exhibited history-dependent divergence in their responses to congestion. In some runs, spontaneously generated hashtags temporarily inhibited departure, indicating that symbolic communication can stabilize short-term group cohesion. Together, these results suggest that coordination in an El Farol-inspired setting becomes socially mediated, temporally extended, and path-dependent once communication and embodiment are restored. More broadly, the study demonstrates how LLM-based agent societies can function as experimental systems for investigating emergent coordination and behavioral differentiation.