Agentic AI Frameworks Explained: Workflows, Multi-Agent, & Production — Transcript
Full transcript
- 0:00Hi, let me guess.
- 0:02The world around you is abuzz with agentic AI systems and their massive potential.
- 0:07So you decide to go off and build an agentic system.
- 0:10You look for the best available framework out there.
- 0:13And now, all of a sudden, you have 17 GitHub tabs open,
- 0:17five medium blocks bookmarked, and you are still clueless on how to proceed.
- 0:22Yes, we've all been there.
- 0:24LangChain, LangGraph, Crew AI, AutoGen, Semantic Kernel.
- 0:29There are so many powerful frameworks out there, but which one would you pick?
- 0:34And in order to answer that question,
- 0:36you first need to understand which type of agentic AI system you want to build.
- 0:41In this video, we are going to cover five types of most common agent AI projects or systems.
- 0:47We are going discuss an example for each of those and also list frameworks
- 0:52which are best suited for those types of agentic AI systems and projects.
- 0:57First, let's get some basics out of the way.
- 0:59What exactly is an agentic AI framework?
- 1:02An agentic framework is a toolkit for building agentic AI systems.
- 1:06Let's understand with an example.
- 1:08Let's say you have an agent to analyze some sales data.
- 1:12This agent goes to a database and extracts the relevant data.
- 1:16It analyzes the data, maybe runs some calculations,
- 1:19and then generates a report and crafts a response that can be sent to the concerned person.
- 1:24Now, there's a lot going on here, and there's lot of coordination that's needed.
- 1:28And it gets even more complex when you have multiple agents working.
- 1:31And that's exactly why you need an agentic AI framework.
- 1:35The framework is like a building block.
- 1:37Unlike a chatbot application where you just ask a question and get an answer,
- 1:41the agentic system actually does a lot of planning, acting, and iterating.
- 1:53It is because of this complexity involved that we need an agentic AI framework.
- 1:57These are like building blocks that help us deploy and manage agentic AI systems.
- 2:04Now these have some predefined functions that help us
- 2:08build agentic AI systems with more ease and agility, such as we have predefined architectures.
- 2:19We might have integration and monitoring tools.
- 2:30We might also have some task management capabilities.
- 2:37And communication protocols.
- 2:42Together, these features and functionalities give agentic AI frameworks the capability
- 2:47to allow us to build these systems with ease.
- 2:50Like we discussed before, there are multiple agentic frameworks available out there,
- 2:55but they're not all competing to do the same type of tasks.
- 2:58In fact, they're optimized for different types of agentic AI systems.
- 3:02Most agentic AI systems and projects we are working on today fall into one of the five categories.
- 3:07First, we have linear workflows.
- 3:09We have autonomous AI agents or autonomous multi-agent systems.
- 3:14We have role-based AI systems, production orchestration systems,
- 3:18and then we have rapid prototyping.
- 3:21Let's dive in and understand each of these in more detail.
- 3:24Let's start with the simplest one, linear workflows.
- 3:30Now, this type of an agentic AI system is where things progress in a step-by-step fashion.
- 3:35It is more predictable what's gonna happen next.
- 3:41And the steps follow a certain sequence.
- 3:47For example, consider a customer-facing application, let's say a customer support agent.
- 3:53The role of this agent is when a user asks a question, the agent is going to take the question
- 3:58and search the knowledge base for relevant responses.
- 4:01It's then going to craft a response and send it back to the user
- 4:04and maybe take an additional action such as creating a support ticket.
- 4:09Now, if you observe, these steps are progressing in a certain fashion, in a certainly sequence,
- 4:14and these systems are more useful when you need the flows to be more reliable.
- 4:22There isn't a need for multiple agents to collaborate to make this happen.
- 4:26And that gives you more control on how things progress.
- 4:33A good example of frameworks that are suitable for this kind of a setup include LangChain.
- 4:42And LlamaIndex.
- 4:47LangChain is more suited for setups where multiple steps need to be happening in a certain sequence.
- 4:54LlamaIndex is highly suitable for
- 4:57heavy applications that are heavy on the data retrieval and indexing.
- 5:03For more complex setups, you could also use LangGraph, which is also by LangChain.
- 5:12Next, we have the autonomous agentic AI systems.
- 5:17In these systems, you typically give AI a goal.
- 5:23And have it figure out how to accomplish it.
- 5:26So in this system, it's very common to see multiple agents collaborating together.
- 5:36These agents talk to each other to accomplish the common goal.
- 5:40A good example of this could be an AI coding assistant.
- 5:43You could have a planner agent that plans the solution for you.
- 5:47You could a coder agent that actually writes the code for you,
- 5:51and a reviewer agent, that is reviewing the code,
- 5:53making recommendations, and also helping with the debugging.
- 5:56These agents are constantly talking to each other in order to give the best code possible to you.
- 6:02So, in this kind of setup, the problem is usually open ended.
- 6:07And that's the kind of problems this kind of setup is most helpful for.
- 6:14So, frameworks that work best for this kind of a scenario include AutoGen.
- 6:23You could also use experimental setups like Baby AGI.
- 6:29And CrewAI could also
- 6:32be helpful for designing these kind of systems where problems are open-ended
- 6:38and multiple agents are collaborating together to achieve a shared goal.
- 6:43Next, we have the role-based agentic AI systems.
- 6:47These are kind of similar to the autonomous agentic systems
- 6:50where there are multiple agents collaborating.
- 6:53So it is also a multi-agent setup.
- 7:01But what makes it different is that each agent within the setup has a defined role.
- 7:10They are still communicating with each other to accomplish that goal,
- 7:14but they are operating within the confines or the constraints posed by their role descriptions.
- 7:20They are working together, but with clear boundaries.
- 7:23A good example of this could be a content generation agent.
- 7:27Here, you could have a researcher agent that goes on the web and fetches
- 7:31all the material that's needed to write a piece of content.
- 7:34There could be writer agent that looks at all the content
- 7:37that has been fetched and writes up an article.
- 7:39That goes out on a social media website, let's say.
- 7:42And then there could be an editor agent that's looking at the article
- 7:46that has been written and make some edits to it.
- 7:49Now, they have very clearly defined roles and they don't
- 7:52go into other agents roles when they do this.
- 7:55They have discussions, but they're strictly confined
- 7:58to the description that has given to them for their particular roles.
- 8:01A good framework that is applicable here is CrewAI.
- 8:09But you could also use AutoGen with some structures around it
- 8:14for this kind of an agentic AI systems.
- 8:16There are also some niche frameworks that are applicable to very specific tasks.
- 8:20Like, for example, for software development kind of tasks, you have ChatDev.
- 8:28So these are the kind of frameworks that you would use for role-based agentic AI systems.
- 8:34Next up, we have the production orchestration systems.
- 8:38Like the name suggests, this is when AI moves out of the experimentation phase
- 8:43and gets real or moves into a real-world system.
- 8:49These kind of systems require deep integration with APIs,
- 8:57databases,
- 9:01and business workflows.
- 9:08Consider the example of an AI operations agent.
- 9:12This agent detects alerts, searches the documentation for the alerts,
- 9:17and then runs some automation scripts
- 9:19and sends summaries in a real world scenario within an organization.
- 9:22Good examples of frameworks that are suitable for this kind of an AI system,
- 9:27include agent framework,
- 9:33which essentially is a combination of semantic kernel and autogen.
- 9:37Another good example here is LangGraph.
- 9:45Which works for well-structured, multilayered applications.
- 9:50Ancient framework is suitable both for orchestration as well as for running
- 9:55autonomous workflows.
- 9:57Last but not least, you have the rapid prototyping.
- 10:02So you always don't need a perfect architecture.
- 10:05You just need to check if your idea would work or not.
- 10:09These types of systems are best when you need to quickly validate ideas.
- 10:16It helps you build quick prototypes.
- 10:21To see if you can bring your ideas to reality.
- 10:25These kind of systems are where you ideally have a user interface where you can drag components
- 10:31and bring them onto a canvas to build quick workflows and test ideas.
- 10:36Examples of tools or frameworks that are useful here include LangFlow.
- 10:45And Flowise.
- 10:49These tools offer you a good graphical
- 10:51user interface where you can bring components onto a canvas
- 10:55and connect models and workflows and quickly test out your ideas
- 10:59that you can later on take into production.
- 11:01These are very quick for rapid prototyping and hence the name.
- 11:05So when choosing a framework, do not ask which framework is the best.
- 11:09Instead ask what kind of system am I trying to build?
- 11:12If it's predictable, use a workflow approach.
- 11:15If it is exploratory, use the autonomous agents.
- 11:18If it needs teamwork, use role-based systems.
- 11:20If it's going into production, use the production orchestration frameworks.
- 11:24And if you are testing ideas, use the rapid prototyping tools.
- 11:28Because the right framework depends on whether you're building a pipeline,
- 11:31a team of agents, or a production AI system.
- 11:34Which agentic AI framework is your typical go-to?
- 11:37Feel free to comment below and don't forget to like and subscribe.
- 11:41Thank you.
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