Agents and harnesses

Building Effective AI Agents

by Anthropic

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Workflows vs agents and the core patterns; argues to start simple. Readable without code.

Anthropic contrasts predefined workflows with systems that choose their next steps. This is a useful first read for deciding whether a simple arrangement is enough before adding autonomous behavior.

Level

Beginner

Models

any

Category

Agents and harnesses

Tags

design-patterns

Source date

2024-12-19

Added

2026-10-18

Last verified

2026-10-18

Status

ok

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