Anatomy of an Agent

Learn the core components that make up an AI agent and how they work together

Interactive Demo

Build your own agent by selecting components and watch it execute a task in real-time.

Agent Configuration Builder

🧠Reasoning Engine

💾Memory System

🔧Available Tools

🔄Control Loop Pattern

Understanding Component Trade-offs

Reasoning Engine Impact

  • GPT-4: 95% accuracy, $0.03/1K tokens, 2-3s latency
  • GPT-3.5: 75% accuracy, $0.001/1K tokens, 500ms latency
  • Trade-off: Quality vs Cost vs Speed

Memory System Impact

  • No Memory: Fast, cheap, but forgets everything
  • Short-term: Remembers conversation, limited by context window
  • Long-term: Persistent knowledge, +$0.01/query, +500ms

Tool Configuration Impact

  • Few tools (1-5): Agent focuses, less confusion
  • Many tools (10+): More capable but slower decisions
  • Trade-off: Versatility vs Decision Quality

Control Loop Impact

  • ReAct: Flexible, adapts to failures, most common
  • Plan-Execute: Efficient for predictable tasks, no replanning
  • Reflexion: Best for error-prone tasks, slower (3x iterations)

💡Component Selection Guide

For simple Q&A bots:
GPT-3.5 + No Memory + Search tool + ReAct
For customer support:
GPT-4 + Long-term memory + Email/Search tools + ReAct
For code generation:
GPT-4 + Short-term + Code exec/File tools + Reflexion
For data processing:
Claude 3.5 + No memory + Calculator/API tools + Plan-Execute