Building effective AI agents requires understanding when and how to add complexity to your LLM applications. According to Anthropic’s experience working with dozens of teams across industries, the most successful agent implementations use simple, composable patterns rather than complex frameworks.
We enjoyed reading building effective AI agents by Anthropic’s engineering team. So we adapted the key points to work with Latitude projects.
Find the simplest solution possible and only increase complexity when needed. This might mean not building agentic systems at all. Often, optimizing single LLM calls with retrieval and in-context examples is sufficient.
Show Consider Trade-offs
Agentic systems often trade latency and cost for better task performance. Consider when this trade-off makes sense for your use case.
Show Choose the Right Pattern
Workflows offer predictability and consistency for well-defined tasks
Agents are better when flexibility and model-driven decision-making are needed at scale
Success in the LLM space isn’t about building the most sophisticated system—it’s 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.The most effective approach is to:
Begin with the simplest possible solution
Measure performance rigorously
Add complexity only when it demonstrably improves outcomes
Focus on clear tool design and transparent agent behavior
Test extensively in sandboxed environments with appropriate guardrails