5 Agentic Design Patterns

Just as software engineering has "Singleton" and "Factory", Agent Engineering has patterns.

1. The ReAct Pattern

Reason + Act. The agent thinks, decides on an action, executes it, and observes the result. This is the default loop for most agents.

2. The Map-Reduce Pattern

Great for analyzing large documents.

• Map: 10 agents read 10 pages each and summarize.
• Reduce: 1 agent reads the 10 summaries and writes a final report.

3. The Reflector Pattern

An agent generates a draft. A second agent (Reflector) critiques it. The first agent revises.

4. The Router Pattern

A lightweight classifier agent decides which expert tool to call. "Is this a math problem or a history question?"

5. The Dynamic Memory Pattern

The agent queries its long-term memory store before acting, updating its context window with relevant facts.

Master these, and you master agents.