06-24
15 AI Agent Design Patterns Every Engineer Must Know
This article outlines 15 AI agent design patterns—ranging from single agent, sequential/parallel multi-agent, review/refinement loops, coordinator, hierarchical decomposition, ReAct, human-in-the-loop, plan-and-execute, reflexion, custom logic, to event-driven agents. Each pattern comes with real-world examples, clear when-to-use and when-it-breaks heuristics, and a decision matrix based on the type of uncertainty. The author emphasizes starting with the simplest pattern, capping iterations and costs, logging full action traces, and keeping irreversible actions behind deterministic checks or human approval. A practical guide for engineers building production agentic systems.