In practice
The pattern that survives contact with production is a hybrid: the model decides, deterministic code performs, and a person approves anything consequential. That combination keeps the flexibility of a model and the predictability of software. Fully autonomous multi-agent architectures are an active research area and a poor foundation for a process your business depends on this quarter.
Where it fits in a build
Agentic design is worth considering when the volume of exceptions in a process is higher than the volume of straightforward cases, or when the rules would need to be rewritten every few weeks to keep up. If you can write the rules down and they hold, write the rules down.
Common mistakes
- Adopting agentic architecture because it is the current vocabulary, not because the process has genuine variability.
- Letting agents call each other without a bounded budget of steps, so a single case can run for hours and cost real money.
- No replay. If you cannot reconstruct why the system did what it did on a given case, you cannot fix it or defend it.
Related terms
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