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Building Effective "Agents"

anthropic.com

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Re: Building Effective "Agents"

#91

Post by th0ma5 »

NeutralForest wrote: post #31
simonw wrote: post #11

This is by far the most practical piece of writing I've seen on the subject of "agents" - it includes actionable definitions, then splits most of the value out into "workflows" and describes those in depth with example applications. There's also a cookbook with useful code examples: https://github.com/anthropics/anthropic-cookbook/tree/main/p... Blogged about this here: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/20/building-…

Thanks for all the write-ups on LLMs, you're on top of the news and it makes it way easier to follow what's happening and the existing implementations by following your blog instead.

Probably the least critical and most myth pushing content imo.

Re: Building Effective "Agents"

#92

Post by th0ma5 »

Nekit1234007 wrote: post #87
simonw wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That logic doesn't work for me, because many words have multiple meanings. "Agency" can also be a noun that means an organization that you hire - like a design agency. Or it can mean the CIA. I'm not saying it's not a valid definition of the term, I'm pushing back on the idea that it's THE single correct definition of the term.

May I push back on the idea that a single word may mean (completely) different things?

[flagged]

Re: Building Effective "Agents"

#93

Post by th0ma5 »

TobTobXX wrote: post #84
skydhash wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first agent decides whether the new email should be responded to, yes or no. How would you trust that the agent is following the criteria, and how sure that the criteria is specific enough. Like someone you just meet told you they going to send you something via email, but then the agent misinterpret it due to missing context and decided to respond in a generic manner leading to misunderstanding. > assume every…

> How would you trust that the agent is following the criteria, and how sure that the criteria is specific enough? How do you know if a spam filter heuristic works only when intended? You test it. Hard. On the thousands of emails in your archive, on edge-cases you prepare manually, and on the incoming mails. If it doesn't work for some cases, write tests that test for this, adjust prompt and run the test suite. It wo…

This is the location of the arguments. When they work they're "magical" but when they don't work "well people or other things are just as bad" ... And this means that you just cannot reason with the mysticism people have surrounding these things because show stopper problems are minimized or it is implied that they can somehow be reduced. The whole rest of computing does not work this way. So, you can't get the magic of reliable systems from probabilistic outcomes, and people confusing these things are seriously holding back honest and real discussions about probabilistic systems. (Not to harp on you specifically here, the whole language of the field is seriously confusing these issues)

Re: Building Effective "Agents"

#94

Post by temp_praneshp »

rybosome wrote: post #85
wahnfrieden wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article does not mention the LangChain framework. LangGraph is a different framework, have you tried it?

Yes, our previous lead dev built a lot of our infra using LangGraph. I've been slowly ripping it out since assuming ownership of this part of the codebase. I've been replacing LangGraph with simple primitives, relying on native Python constructs, etc. For example, instead of building this verbose graph of computation with LangGraph, you can just...call functions in the order you want them. Or declare them async, add…

So all you achieved from a spreadsheet's worth of PRs was a 1k LoC reduction?

Re: Building Effective "Agents"

#96

Post by chrisweekly »

Nekit1234007 wrote: post #87
simonw wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That logic doesn't work for me, because many words have multiple meanings. "Agency" can also be a noun that means an organization that you hire - like a design agency. Or it can mean the CIA. I'm not saying it's not a valid definition of the term, I'm pushing back on the idea that it's THE single correct definition of the term.

May I push back on the idea that a single word may mean (completely) different things?

What's the single, unambiguous definition of the word "cleave"?

Re: Building Effective "Agents"

#97

Post by Der_Einzige »

simonw wrote: post #73
JonChesterfield wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defining "agent" as "thing with agency" seems legitimate to me, what with them being the same word.

That logic doesn't work for me, because many words have multiple meanings. "Agency" can also be a noun that means an organization that you hire - like a design agency. Or it can mean the CIA. I'm not saying it's not a valid definition of the term, I'm pushing back on the idea that it's THE single correct definition of the term.

Anything involving real agents likely does get your local spymaster interested. I assume all good AI work attracts the three letter types to make sure that the researcher isn’t trying to make AI that can make bioweapons…

Re: Building Effective "Agents"

#98

Post by ToValueFunfetti »

Nekit1234007 wrote: post #87
simonw wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That logic doesn't work for me, because many words have multiple meanings. "Agency" can also be a noun that means an organization that you hire - like a design agency. Or it can mean the CIA. I'm not saying it's not a valid definition of the term, I'm pushing back on the idea that it's THE single correct definition of the term.

May I push back on the idea that a single word may mean (completely) different things?

Aloha! Indeed, the language is being cleaved by such oversights. You can be in charge of overlooking this issue, effective ahead of two weeks from now. We'll peruse your results and impassionately sanction anything you call out (at least when it's unravelable). This endeavor should prove invaluable. Aloha!

Re: Building Effective "Agents"

#99

Post by herecomethefuzz »

temp_praneshp wrote: post #94
rybosome wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, our previous lead dev built a lot of our infra using LangGraph. I've been slowly ripping it out since assuming ownership of this part of the codebase. I've been replacing LangGraph with simple primitives, relying on native Python constructs, etc. For example, instead of building this verbose graph of computation with LangGraph, you can just...call functions in the order you want them. Or declare them async, add…

So all you achieved from a spreadsheet's worth of PRs was a 1k LoC reduction?

If you do any software engineering all, you would know that a 1k LoC reduction to achieve the same functionality at the same/better performance is non-trivial.

Re: Building Effective "Agents"

#100

Post by herecomethefuzz »

th0ma5 wrote: post #91
NeutralForest wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for all the write-ups on LLMs, you're on top of the news and it makes it way easier to follow what's happening and the existing implementations by following your blog instead.

Probably the least critical and most myth pushing content imo.

> most myth pushing content

Care to elaborate?

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