Layer 3
Agent Orchestration
- Why it exists
- The core execution layer. LangGraph state machines, conditional routing, parallel branches, subgraphs and interrupts control how agents plan, execute and hand off tasks.
- What can fail
- Deadlocks, infinite loops, unhandled errors, state corruption, cascading failures across agents.
- What learners implement
- Typed state schemas, nodes, edges, reducers, checkpoints, interrupts and conditional routing.
Layer 7
Persistent Agent Control Plane
- Why it exists
- Every agent layer needs a persistent control plane that applies tracing, evaluation, guardrails, human approval, authentication, cost controls, latency controls, checkpoints, retries, rollback and audit logs.
- What can fail
- Without a control plane, agent failures are invisible, unbounded and unrecoverable.
- What learners implement
- A persistent control plane with tracing, evaluation gates, cost and latency limits, checkpoints, retry policies and audit logging.
Experience and Interaction
Why: Users interact with agents through chat, voice, UI components or agent-generated interfaces. The interaction layer must handle streaming, state display and human approval actions.
What can fail: Poor latency perception, confusing state transitions, missing approval prompts, unsafe content rendering.
What learners implement: AG-UI event streaming, A2UI safe rendering, approval interfaces and progress indicators.
Agent–UI Interaction
Why: Connects agent runtimes with frontends through structured events. Text streaming, tool-call events, state snapshots and deltas must be handled predictably.
What can fail: Lost events, stale state, race conditions between agent and frontend, unsafe UI injection.
What learners implement: AG-UI event handlers, state synchronization and human-in-the-loop action surfaces.
Agent Orchestration
Why: The core execution layer. LangGraph state machines, conditional routing, parallel branches, subgraphs and interrupts control how agents plan, execute and hand off tasks.
What can fail: Deadlocks, infinite loops, unhandled errors, state corruption, cascading failures across agents.
What learners implement: Typed state schemas, nodes, edges, reducers, checkpoints, interrupts and conditional routing.
Agent Communication
Why: Agents need to discover, message and share artifacts with each other across frameworks. A2A protocol enables interoperability between independent agent systems.
What can fail: Discovery failures, message format mismatches, lost artifacts, incompatible task contracts.
What learners implement: A2A agent cards, task delegation, message passing and artifact exchange.
Context, Retrieval and Memory
Why: Agents need grounded, persistent and governed memory. Retrieval grounds responses in external knowledge; memory systems maintain working, semantic, episodic and procedural state.
What can fail: Memory poisoning, unbounded growth, stale context, conflicting updates, hallucination from ungrounded generation.
What learners implement: Agentic RAG pipelines, reranking, memory consolidation, compression and poisoning controls.
Tools and Enterprise Systems
Why: MCP provides standardized tool and context connectivity. Agents access databases, APIs, files and enterprise systems through permissioned, auditable tool boundaries.
What can fail: Tool poisoning, prompt injection, unauthorised access, data exfiltration, missing audit trails.
What learners implement: MCP servers with authentication, authorization, permission boundaries, audit logs and multi-server architecture.
Persistent Agent Control Plane
Why: Every agent layer needs a persistent control plane that applies tracing, evaluation, guardrails, human approval, authentication, cost controls, latency controls, checkpoints, retries, rollback and audit logs.
What can fail: Without a control plane, agent failures are invisible, unbounded and unrecoverable.
What learners implement: A persistent control plane with tracing, evaluation gates, cost and latency limits, checkpoints, retry policies and audit logging.