Notes from building agent systems

Evaluation harnesses, orchestration patterns, memory design and the failures behind them — written up while the details are still fresh.

All posts llm-agents 4 agent-safety 2 evaluation 2 multi-agent-systems 2 orchestration 2 agent-economics 1 agent-evaluation 1 agent-failure-modes 1 agent-governance 1 agent-memory 1 agent-sandboxing 1 agent-security 1

Bundle of fiber optic cables emitting colored light at their exposed tips

20 Sept 2026·6 min read

Agent Failure Taxonomy: Naming the Ways Multi-Step Systems Break

A shared vocabulary for agent failure modes turns incident reviews from anecdote into countable, regression-testable signals across model, tool, orchestration and data layers.

agent-failure-modesmulti-step-systemsincident-review

Automated assembly line with robotic arms positioned along a conveyor in a factory

20 Sept 2026·6 min read

The Chief-of-Staff Pattern: When to Orchestrate Agents and When to Just Write a Script

Multi-agent orchestration pays off only when subtasks need different context, different tools, or independent verification. Otherwise it is a slower function call.

multi-agent-systemsorchestrationllm-agents