How to think about agent frameworks

Building reliable agentic systems is challenging primarily because of the difficulty in providing the LLM with appropriate context at every step. A distinction is made between "workflows," which have predefined code paths, and "agents," where LLMs dynamically direct their own processes, with most production systems being a hybrid of both. While many agent frameworks offer abstractions that can simplify initial development, they can also obscure the fine-grained control needed for reliability. LangGraph is presented as an orchestration framework with both declarative and imperative APIs for building these complex systems, allowing developers to manage context and control flow effectively.