Agents and Workflows
A few months ago I met a friend for drinks at the pub. While waiting, I dove into this Anthropic article on agents. I took considerable notes because a, I found it interesting, and b, this multi million dollar company with considerable reosurces and brain power had converged on the same answers that i did.
I get a lot of use out of that image. I am probably about due to rewatch mad men.
Astute resders will note i said i took “considerable” notes. Most of them did not make their way here, as a lot pertained to how to DIY an agentic framework from scratch, something I thought I wanted at the start of the year, but my infrequent OAI deep research useage shows that I infact, do not.
This post really doesnt serve much except getting these assorted notes out of my phone and into a format I can digest them later on again.
“Consistently, the most succesful implementations werent using complex frameworks or specialised libraries. Instead, they were building with simple, composable patterns”
Wow, so basically what I said here almost three years ago turned out to once again be correct? Who would have thought? Oh thats right, I did.
There is a delination that does need to be made; agents vs workflows. I am a big proponent of this image
Because all my little ML powered tools (which will be discussed soon I just havent gotten there yet) are quite simply little bash loops. Why? Because it works. Agents, by the strict definition set here (which huggingface also agrees with) have no place in what i want to acheive.
“Workflows are systems where LLMs and tools asre orchestrated through predefined code paths.”
“Agents are systems where LLMs dynamially direct their own proicesses an dtool usage, maintianing control over how they accomplish their tasks.”
I can smugly point to this because I am infact certified.
“When building applications with LLMs, we recommend finding the simplest solution possible, and only increasing complexity when needed. This might mean not building agentic systems at all.”
Look honestly this blog could end here. This right here IS the justification for why my shitty loops are perfectly fine; they are just advanced enough to do the thing they need to and no more.
“Workflows offer predictability and consistency for well defined tasks.” ie a well constructed bash loop
“Agents better when flecibility and model driven decision making are needed at scale.” ie utter insanity dreamed up by the utterly deranged
“If you do use a framework, ensure you understand the underlying code. Incorrect assumptions about whats under the hood are a common source of customer error.”
WOW so youre saying this shits JUST like programming? that the magic number machines are infact only as good as the operator?
“The autonomous nature of agents means higher costs, and the potential for compounding errors.”
“Success in the LLM space isnt about building the most sophisticated system. Its about building the right system for your needs. Start with simple prompts, optimize them with comprehensive evaluation, and add multi step agentic systems only when simpler solutions fall short.”
This, here, is the real reason for the loop meme. Its because 90% of problems are solved with the simpler solution. there are very, very few novel things on earth, and that includes issues. Almost every issue you can possible encounter has a been run into before, and therefore a simple solution can be crafted.
“Customer support and coding agents are [anthropics observed] two biggest success areas for agents”.
At face value, this reads like an endorsement for agents, but look at the inverse; they are saying ‘basically everything except customer support and coding were not succesful wrt agents’.
The final paragraph is from a secondary source I read at the same time. I dont remember where its from, or whom, and I dont care to look it up.
“Before we start building the agent, lets degine the goal of the agent
•Define problem
•Break problem into each part
•Build tooling for each part of the problem”
SHEESH. Thats been in my notes since JAN and it is MAY. I have been LAZY with my posting. I have approx half a dozen I have been meaning to get out the door, but just keep getting sidetracked and pulled into a dozen different little directions. It is interesting to observe the rotation of blog topics, from infosec to gaming to ML, with each of those three major topics each receiving different amounts of air time year on year.
Things at work feel kind of stable, and I dont feel the crushing death race to get ahead using AGI in the basement anymore. Twitter is extremley neurtoric and I will be ceasing to use it soon. 4chan is my real home, theres just nothing to be gained on twitter. Anyway the point I was driving towards is I think the ML topics are winding up for a little bit (I chuckle as the next 3 I have in draft are all ML related) and I have some interesting gaming things I want to discuss next.
