Agents Need Control Flow, Not More Prompts
Implement deterministic control flow in agent orchestration to reduce hallucinations and improve reliability.
Refactor your agent workflows to use explicit state machines instead of long prompt chains.
Summary
The article argues that prompt chains lack determinism and can lead to hallucinations, making them unsuitable for complex agent tasks. It proposes deterministic state transitions and validation checkpoints as a solution, treating the LLM as a component rather than the system. Three approaches are outlined: a Babysitter that keeps a human in the loop, an Auditor that performs exhaustive verification after the run, and a Prayer that accepts outputs without checks. The author emphasizes the need for programmatic verification to ensure reliability in agent workflows. Moving logic out of prose into explicit software constructs enables local reasoning and easier debugging. The piece highlights the challenges of building partially‑sync, partially‑async workflows and the importance of resilience. It encourages developers to refactor agents into state machines with clear checkpoints. The goal is to reduce silent failures and improve overall agent reliability.
Key changes
- Prompt chains lack determinism and can cause hallucinations
- Proposes deterministic state transitions and validation checkpoints
- Three approaches: Babysitter, Auditor, Prayer
- Emphasizes programmatic verification for reliability
- Encourages moving logic out of prose into explicit software constructs
- Highlights challenges of partially‑sync, partially‑async workflows
- Recommends refactoring agents into state machines with checkpoints
- Goal is to reduce silent failures and improve agent reliability