Building Reliable AI Agents: Six Hard-Won Lessons

This article shares six crucial lessons learned in building AI agents. The author emphasizes the importance of clear instructions, lean context management, robust tool interfaces, and automated validation loops. It highlights that modern LLMs need direct, detailed context, avoiding manipulative prompting. Powerful AI agents are built by combining LLMs with tools and basic control flow operators. A two-phase algorithm—one for generation, one for validation—is recommended, with iterative improvement and error analysis crucial for reliability and recoverability.