SURVEY OF AGENT FRAMEWORKS

EXAMPLES Example 1: A graph-based orchestration framework. A team builds an agent that drafts a reply, checks it against company policy, and loops back to redraft if the check fails. In a graph-based framework such as LangGraph, they draw a node for drafting, a node for checking, and a conditional edge from the check that either leads back to drafting or on to sending. They also save a checkpoint before sending, so that a human can approve the message and the run can continue afterward. The cycle, the branching, and the saved state all map directly onto the way the graph is defined. Example 2: A role-based, crew-style framework. A small marketing team wants a weekly industry briefing. Using a crew-style framework such as CrewAI, they define a researcher, a writer, and an editor, each with a goal and a short backstory. They give the crew the shared task of producing the briefing. They get a first version running in an afternoon. Later, they notice that the editor sometimes repeats the writer's work, so they inspect the prompts the framework sends and tighten the editor's goal. Example 3: A lightweight, minimal framework. A solo developer builds a support helper. They choose a thin library that offers only the basic loop and tool calling, because they want to decide how memory and safety checks work. The whole library is short enough to read in one sitting. They add their own budget limit and logging, and they know exactly what happens on every step. Example 4: Build your own versus adopt a framework. A company in a heavily regulated field must produce a complete, tamper-evident audit trail of every decision an agent makes. After testing two general-purpose frameworks, the team finds that the built-in logging cannot easily be made to meet its audit rules. They decide to build a custom harness from lower-level pieces, so the audit trail is part of the design from the start. A different team with ordinary needs and a tight deadline makes the opposite choice and adopts a framework, and that is also the right decision for them.