Agent Design

How you actually build AI agents that work. Architectures, tool use, memory patterns, and the frameworks worth paying attention to.

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The Budget Problem: Why AI Agents Are Learning to Be Cheap
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The Budget Problem: Why AI Agents Are Learning to Be Cheap

In January 2026, researchers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock discovered something unsettling: their dialogue agents were using 41% more...

7 min read
We Built the Agent Internet Before Its Firewalls
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We Built the Agent Internet Before Its Firewalls

In January 2026, a security startup called Cyata published three CVEs against Anthropic's official Git MCP server. Not a third-party wrapper. Not a...

8 min read
Tools That Think Back: When AI Agents Learn to Build Their Own Interfaces
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Tools That Think Back: When AI Agents Learn to Build Their Own Interfaces

The best AI agents today succeed on only 62.3% of real-world tool-use tasks. That number comes from [MCP-Atlas](https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.00933), a...

5 min read
When Agents Meet Reality: The Friction Nobody Planned For
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When Agents Meet Reality: The Friction Nobody Planned For

[Klarna's AI assistant](https://openai.com/index/klarna/) handled 2.3 million customer service conversations in its first month, the equivalent work of...

6 min read
Why 76% of AI Agent Deployments Fail — And What the Survivors Do Differently
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Why 76% of AI Agent Deployments Fail — And What the Survivors Do Differently

A researcher tracked 847 AI agent deployments through the first quarter of 2026. Within 90 days, 76% had experienced critical failures. After six months,...

5 min read
AI Agent Frameworks in 2026: How to Choose Without Getting Burned
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AI Agent Frameworks in 2026: How to Choose Without Getting Burned

In October 2025, Microsoft moved AutoGen into maintenance mode. The framework that led the GAIA benchmark by four points and doubled its competitors on...

10 min read
AI Agent Security in 2026: Prompt Injection, Memory Poisoning, and the OWASP Top 10
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AI Agent Security in 2026: Prompt Injection, Memory Poisoning, and the OWASP Top 10

In June 2025, a researcher sent a single crafted email to a Microsoft 365 Copilot user's inbox. No click required, no attachment opened, no link followed....

10 min read
Agent Reliability Scores Are Getting Worse, Not Better
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Agent Reliability Scores Are Getting Worse, Not Better

SWE-Bench scores tick up every quarter, but production failure rates aren't dropping. A METR study found half of test-passing PRs wouldn't be merged. The more capable we make agents, the less reliably they behave.

3 min read
When to Build vs Buy Your Agent Orchestration Layer
Guides

When to Build vs Buy Your Agent Orchestration Layer

A team picks an agent framework in January, ships a demo in February, and by July they're ripping it out to build something custom. The autonomous agent market will hit $8.5 billion this year.

8 min read
Agent Tool-Use Patterns: How LLMs Actually Wield APIs
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Agent Tool-Use Patterns: How LLMs Actually Wield APIs

Tool use is where agents meet the real world. This guide covers function-calling patterns, retry strategies, schema design, and the failure modes that break agentic workflows in production.

9 min read
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