51–60 of 93 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does anyone know which AI agent framework Anthropic uses? It doesn't seem like they ever released one of their own.
Just write the for loop to react to tool calls? It’s not very much code.
This article remains one of the better pieces on this topic, especially since it clearly defines which definition of "AI agents" they are using at the start! They use: "systems where LLMs dynamically direct their own processes and tool usage, maintaining control over how they accomplish tasks". I also like the way they distinguish between "agents" and "workflows", and describe a bunch of useful workflow patterns. I p…
This article remains one of the better pieces on this topic, especially since it clearly defines which definition of "AI agents" they are using at the start! They use: "systems where LLMs dynamically direct their own processes and tool usage, maintaining control over how they accomplish tasks". I also like the way they distinguish between "agents" and "workflows", and describe a bunch of useful workflow patterns. I p…
I believe the definition of workflows in this article is inaccurate. Workflows in modern engines do not take predefined code paths, and agents are effectively the same as workflows in these cases. The redefinition of workflows seems to be an attempt to differentiate, but for the most part an agent is nothing more than a workflow that is a loop that dynamically invokes things based on LLM responses. Modern workflow en…
Workflows have a lot more structure and rules about information and control flow. Agents, on the other hand, are often given a set of tools and a prompt. They are much more free-form.
For example, a workflow might define a fuzzy rule like "if customer issue is refund, go to refund flow," while an agent gets customer service tools and figures out how to handle each case on its own.
To me, this is a meaningful distinction to make. Workflows can be more predictable and reliable. Agents have more freedom and can tackle a greater breadth of tasks.
How do agents deal with task queueing, race conditions, and other issues arising from concurrency? I see lots of cool articles about building workflows of multiple agents - plus what feels like hand-waving around declaring an orchestrator agent to oversee the whole thing. And my mind goes to whether there needs to be some serious design considerations and clever glue code. Or does it all work automagically?
Nothing works automagically. You still have to build in all the operational characteristics that you would for any traditional system. It's deceptively easy to look at some AI agent demos and think "oh, I can replace my team's huge mess of spaghetti code with a few clever AI prompts!" And it may even work for the first couple use cases. But all that code is there for a reason, and eventually it'll have to be reckoned…
A few clearly defined LLM calls with some light glue logic usually lead to something more stable, easier to debug, and much cheaper to run. The flashy, full-featured agents often end up causing more problems than they solve.
They are so desperate that they start writing about LLM patterns now. Is an agentic LLM framework a Code Factory? Or perhaps a Code Factory Factory? Or is it like a burrito (meme explanation of Monads when they were the latest hype)?
This article remains one of the better pieces on this topic, especially since it clearly defines which definition of "AI agents" they are using at the start! They use: "systems where LLMs dynamically direct their own processes and tool usage, maintaining control over how they accomplish tasks". I also like the way they distinguish between "agents" and "workflows", and describe a bunch of useful workflow patterns. I p…
I believe the definition of workflows in this article is inaccurate. Workflows in modern engines do not take predefined code paths, and agents are effectively the same as workflows in these cases. The redefinition of workflows seems to be an attempt to differentiate, but for the most part an agent is nothing more than a workflow that is a loop that dynamically invokes things based on LLM responses. Modern workflow en…
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/workflow thinks the word dates back to 1921.
There no reason Anthropic can't take that word and present their own alternative definition for it in the context of LLM tool usage, which is what they've done here.