Author(s): Divy Yadav

Originally published on Towards AI.

There are nine ways to wire an AI agent together, explained in plain English, with visuals.

Every AI agent you’ve ever used runs on one of nine wiring diagrams.

The article explains that AI developers often don’t lack a single “best” agent architecture—they usually struggle with choosing the right pattern for the problem. After outlining how workflows (preplanned paths controlled by code) differ from agents (paths decided by the model), it walks through nine fundamental architectures—starting with ReAct and Reflexion, then prompt chaining, routing, parallelization, orchestrator-workers, evaluator-optimizer, graph orchestration, and swarm—highlighting what each does, when it works, when it fails, and what it’s best for. It also emphasizes that real production systems typically combine a few patterns, encourages starting with the simplest setup and adding complexity only when metrics show a need, and notes key references behind the patterns.

Read the full blog for free on Medium.

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Published via Towards AI