# Building Effective Agents: Workflow and Agent Patterns

> Architectural framework categorizing LLM workflows and autonomous agent patterns

An architectural taxonomy based on Anthropic's research that classifies LLM applications into structured workflows and autonomous agents. It breaks down design patterns ranging from basic prompt chaining to dynamic tool-use feedback loops, helping developers choose the simplest reliable architecture for a task.

## The framework

Three categories:

1. Workflows — LLM is embedded in predefined code paths

- Prompt chaining: In → LLM call → LLM → Out

- Parallelization: In fans out to two LLM calls, each → Out

2. Workflows — LLM directs control flow through predefined code paths

- Orchestrator-Worker: Orchestrator routes to multiple Workers, then a Synthesizer produces output

- Evaluator-optimizer: Generator looped with an Evaluator

- Routing: Router sends input to one of several LLM calls

3. Agent — LLM directs its own actions based on environmental feedback: In → LLM call → action on a Tool → Out, with a feedback loop back into the LLM.

All patterns are built from scratch in LangGraph (video: https://youtu.be/aHCDrAbH\_go, tutorial: https://langchain-ai.github.io/langgraph/tutorials/workflows/); original post: https://www.anthropic.com/research/building-effective-agents

## What it is for

- Choose between deterministic workflows and autonomous agent architectures for an LLM application
- Implement iterative quality control loops using the evaluator-optimizer pattern
- Design parallelized or routed multi-step prompt chains in frameworks like LangGraph
- Structure tool-use loops where LLM actions depend on runtime environment feedback

## Key points

- Three-tier classification system separating static workflows, dynamic routing, and autonomous agents
- Sequential prompt chaining pattern for multi-step deterministic tasks
- Parallelization pattern for concurrent LLM processing and aggregation
- Orchestrator-worker pattern for decomposing complex goals into subtasks
- Evaluator-optimizer pattern for iterative generation and refinement
- Routing pattern for directing inputs to specialized prompts or tools
- Autonomous agent pattern with environment feedback loops and tool execution

## Pricing

Free

## Details

- Type: Framework
- Category: [AI](https://xiry.app/topics/ai.md)
- Topic: [Design Systems](https://xiry.app/topics/design/design-systems.md)
- Open source: no
- Platforms: other
- For: AI engineers and software developers building LLM-powered applications
- Tags: agents, prompt engineering, llm architecture, langgraph, workflows, frameworks

## Why it was saved

- [@LangChain, 27 January 2025](https://x.com/LangChain/status/1883926126583771531): A mental model for deciding whether a task needs a simple workflow, a controlled pipeline, or a true agent.

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Updated 11 October 2026. Page: https://xiry.app/resources/building-effective-agents-workflow-and-agent-patterns

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