Agentic AI
Autonomous loops with tool access: ReAct pattern, planning engines, state management, MCP protocol, and multi-agent coordination.
Prerequisite Note
Assumes Gen AI fundamentals — LLM APIs, prompting, and embeddings.
View prerequisite path (gen-ai)Interactive Question & Article Stream
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Beginner Modules(0/8)
ReAct Loop Architecture: Managing Thought-Action-Observation State
ArticleHow does the Thought-Action-Observation (ReAct) loop function state-wise during runtime, and why does an unconstrained observation window lead to immediate context drift or failure in simple autonomous loops?
Tool Calling and JSON Schema: How LLMs Translate Function Signatures into Structured Calls
ArticleHow does an LLM runtime translate an abstract function signature into a strict JSON Schema call, and what deterministic parsing strategy should be implemented when the model generates syntactically valid JSON that violates the required schema types?
Deterministic vs. Non-Deterministic Boundaries in Agentic Architecture
ArticleIn an agentic architecture, which components must remain strictly deterministic (hardcoded state machine), and which should be delegated to non-deterministic LLM reasoning? How do you enforce this boundary?
Static vs. Dynamic Task Decomposition: Plan-and-Solve vs. Runtime Re-planning
ArticleWhat are the structural differences between static step-by-step task decomposition (e.g., Plan-and-Solve) and dynamic re-planning during tool execution, and what runtime telemetry signals that a plan needs to be discarded?
ReAct Token Growth: Why Full-History Replay Gets Expensive Fast
ArticleIn a naive ReAct loop implementation, why does appending the entire history of `Thought -> Action -> Observation` back into the prompt on every turn lead to exponential token consumption, and how is this mitigated at the basic loop level?
Native vs. Prompt-Based Tool Calling: Why Native Reduces Parsing Failures
ArticleWhat is the technical mechanism behind "native tool calling" supported by model providers versus prompt-based tool calling (e.g., instructing the model to output XML/JSON in plain text), and why does native tool calling reduce parsing failures?
Guardrails for Tool Execution: Validating Agent Parameters Before and After a Call
ArticleHow do you enforce strict pre-execution and post-execution guardrails around a tool call to verify that the generated parameters (e.g., file paths, database queries) conform to system safety bounds before the execution engine runs them?
DAG Task Decomposition: Handling Data Dependencies Between Sub-Task Nodes
ArticleWhen an agent decomposes a complex goal into a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) of sub-tasks, how do you handle data dependencies between nodes when Node B requires the runtime output of Node A?
Intermediate Modules(0/8)
Dual-Layer Agent Memory: Separating Short-Term Execution State from Long-Term Episodic Recall
ArticleHow do you architect a dual-layer memory system that separates short-term execution state from long-term episodic memory, and what dynamic retrieval strategy prevents irrelevant semantic memories from polluting the active context window?
State-Graph Agent Architectures: Checkpointers, Persistence, and Time-Travel Debugging
ArticleHow do state-graph architectures (e.g., LangGraph) model agent loops as directed graphs with persistence, and how do explicit checkpointers enable time-travel, replay, and mutation of state during execution failures?
Async Human-in-the-Loop Interrupts: Pausing Agents Without Blocking the Server
ArticleHow do you design an asynchronous Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) interrupt pattern for high-risk tool executions without stalling the underlying application server or losing process context?
Self-Correction Feedback Loops: Healing Agent Errors from Tool Exceptions
ArticleWhen a tool call throws an execution exception (e.g., `404 Not Found` or `SyntaxError`), what self-correction/reflection feedback pattern should be fed back into the context to allow the agent to heal its approach without repeating the error?
Key-Value Stores vs. Vector Search vs. Knowledge Graphs: Long-Term Memory for Code-Generation Agents
ArticleWhat are the trade-offs between using key-value state stores, semantic vector search, and structured knowledge graphs for long-term agent memory when building a code-generation agent?
State Reducers in Agent Graphs: Handling Concurrent Updates Without Race Conditions
ArticleIn graph-based agent frameworks, how do state "reducers" work under the hood to handle concurrent state updates from multiple parallel node executions without causing race conditions or state corruption?
Reconciling Human Edits with Agent State During HITL Approval Flows
ArticleWhen a human supervisor modifies the proposed state or edit plan during an HITL interrupt, how should the execution engine reconcile the human's manual edits with the agent's prior trajectory context?
State Backtracking vs. Conversational Reflection: Recovering from Agent Dead-Ends
ArticleHow does explicit state backtracking (e.g., Tree-of-Thoughts or graph rewind) differ from simple conversational reflection when an agent hits an execution dead-end during a complex multi-file codebase refactor?
Advanced Modules(0/8)
Hierarchical vs. Peer-to-Peer Multi-Agent Topologies: Latency, Isolation, and Failure Risk
ArticleWhat are the operational trade-offs between a Supervisor/Worker (Hierarchical) agent topology and a Peer-to-Peer agent network in terms of latency, context isolation, and single-point-of-failure risks?
Context Compaction at Scale: Semantic Truncation, Rolling Summarization, and KV Dropping
ArticleAs an agent execution trace approaches the model's maximum context length, what context compaction algorithms (e.g., semantic truncation, rolling summarization, key-value dropping) preserve the highest utility for tool planning while keeping token costs bounded?
Sub-Agent Handoff Protocols: Passing State Across Task Boundaries Without Loss
ArticleHow do you design an explicit state-passing and handoff protocol between specialized sub-agents to prevent lost context and state corruption when delegating tasks across boundaries?
Dynamic Tool Synthesis: Generating and Safely Validating New Tools at Runtime
ArticleHow can an agent dynamically generate, compile, and execute new tools at runtime to solve unexpected tasks, and how do you ensure these dynamically created tools are safely validated before execution?
Router/Dispatcher Agents: Avoiding Cognitive Bottlenecks and Latency Inflation
ArticleHow do you design an efficient Router/Dispatcher agent that dynamically selects and hands off tasks to specialized downstream agents without becoming a single point of cognitive bottleneck or latency inflation?
Dynamic Token Budget Controllers: Allocating Context Across Instructions, Tools, Memory, and History
ArticleHow do you construct a dynamic token budget controller that allocates token allowances across system instructions, active tool definitions, dynamic memory retrieval, and short-term execution history based on the current phase of task execution?
Dynamic Tool Registries: Searching and Binding OpenAPI Schemas Without Context Bloat
ArticleHow do you implement a dynamic Tool Registry that allows an agent to search, inspect, and bind OpenAPI schemas or function definitions on the fly, avoiding context window bloat caused by loading hundreds of static tools upfront?
Parent-Child Sub-Agent Spawning: Parallel Execution, Lifecycle Monitoring, and Result Aggregation
ArticleHow do you architect a parent agent pattern capable of spawning transient child sub-agents in parallel, monitoring their lifecycles, and aggregating their asynchronous execution results into a unified parent state?
