Building effective agents

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1. 01

   First a workflow with fixed steps; an autonomous agent only when the steps cannot be known in advance.

   Building effective agents · 2024

   If you can draw the flowchart, build a workflow, not an agent.

   The text separates workflows (model and tools orchestrated through predefined code paths) from agents (the model directs its own process). Five workflow patterns: prompt chaining, routing, parallelisation, orchestrator–workers, evaluator–optimiser. The decision rule: if you can draw the flowchart, build the workflow — it is cheaper, testable, predictable. Move to an agent when the number of steps is unknown and the task needs the model's judgement at every step (open-ended coding, research). The agent's price: latency, spend, compounding errors. Start with the simplest thing that works and add autonomy only when measured evaluations say the workflow falls short.

   “Consistently, the most successful implementations use simple, composable patterns rather than complex frameworks.”

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