[gregorymichael]

One of my favorite AI How-tos in the last year. Barry and Erik spend 80% of the post saying ~”eh, you probably don’t need agents. Just build straightforward deterministic workflows with if-statements instead.”

And then, when you actually do need agents, don’t over complicate it!

This post also introduced the concept of an Augmented LLM — a LLM hooked up to tools, memory, data — which is a useful abstraction for evolving LLM use beyond fancy autocomplete.

“An augmented LLM running in a loop” is the best definition of an agent I’ve heard so far.