Reliability is a structural property
You cannot prompt your way to reliability. Dependable agentic systems are structured so that the unpredictable part — the reasoning step — is contained by deterministic components that can validate, retry, escalate and record.
Patterns that hold up
A small set of structures accounts for most of the systems we ship.
- A deterministic orchestrator owning control flow, with the model deciding only within a step.
- Typed tool contracts with server-side authorisation, never free-form execution.
- Explicit memory: scoped, expiring, and separate from retrieval.
- Human approval gates positioned by operational risk, not by convenience.
Measure before you widen the boundary
Every expansion of an agent's authority should be earned by evaluation data from the narrower version. Reliability improves fastest when the boundary moves in small, measured increments.
References
- Argbit reference architectures — Argbit Labs