# Building effective agents

> Anthropic article on patterns for workflows and agents

- Category: Guides & reading (`guides`)
- Tags: `learning`
- Official: https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/building-effective-agents
- Wunderlust: https://wunderlust.xyz/r/building-effective-agents
- Image: https://wunderlust.xyz/media/building-effective-agents-poster.jpg
- Video preview: https://wunderlust.xyz/media/building-effective-agents.webm
- Added: 2026-11-05

## What it is

An Anthropic engineering article that distinguishes workflows (predefined code paths) from agents (LLMs that direct their own process) and describes the patterns for each.

## What it’s for

For deciding when to use a workflow or an agent and how to structure it, starting from the simplest option.

## Benefits

- Describes five workflows: prompt chaining, routing, parallelization, orchestrator-workers and evaluator-optimizer
- Recommends starting with the simplest solution and adding complexity only when it improves the result
- Gives guidance on documenting and testing tools with the same care as prompts

## Caveats

- Published in 2024; its recommendations may have evolved.

## Similar on Wunderlust

- [Anthropic's prompt engineering docs](https://wunderlust.xyz/r/anthropic-prompt-engineering.md): Anthropic's guide to prompting best practices for Claude models
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- [Ben AI](https://wunderlust.xyz/r/ben-ai-canal.md): YouTube channel about AI and Claude Skills recommended as a learning source
- [CC for PMs](https://wunderlust.xyz/r/cc-for-pms.md): Author's site with articles and courses on Claude Code for PMs
- [50 Design Styles Every Designer Should Know for Better Prompting](https://wunderlust.xyz/r/50-design-styles-for-better-prompting.md): Article with 50 design styles for naming AI prompts precisely
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