Section guide
Pattern Selection and Composition
Decision guides for choosing, scoring, composing, routing, budgeting, and hardening patterns before implementation.
Use when you need to choose, compare, combine, or constrain patterns before implementation.
Leave with a defensible pattern choice and the controls that choice requires.
A pattern decision with rejected alternatives, acceptance criteria, and known risks.
Reading order
10 chapters- 01 Architecture Before Autonomy Guide · Intermediate 10-20 min read Architect · Reviewer
Architecture Before Autonomy explains why ownership, policy, state, evals, and rollback should come before adding agentic behavior.
- 02 Choosing the Right Pattern Guide · Intermediate 10-20 min read Architect · Reviewer
Choosing the Right Pattern helps you select the least agentic architecture that can meet the workload with acceptable quality, cost, latency, and risk.
- 03 Pattern Evaluation Checklist Reference · Intermediate 10-20 min reference Architect · Reviewer
The evaluation checklist turns pattern choice into reviewable evidence: use cases, avoid cases, failure modes, evals, and release blockers.
- 04 From Patterns To Systems Guide · Intermediate 10-20 min read Architect · Reviewer
This chapter shows how individual patterns compose into systems with explicit state, tools, policy, evals, runtime, and ownership.
- 05 Pattern Composition Playbook Guide · Intermediate 10-20 min read Architect · Reviewer
The playbook shows common pattern combinations and the controls needed when loops, tools, memory, routing, and evaluation meet.
- 06 Prompt Chaining and Gates Guide · Intermediate 10-20 min read Architect · Reviewer
Prompt Chaining and Gates covers fixed multi-step model workflows where software validates each stage before the next one runs.
- 07 Routing and Handoffs Guide · Intermediate 10-20 min read Architect · Reviewer
Routing and Handoffs explains how to send work to the right model, tool, agent, policy, or human without hiding authority boundaries.
- 08 Resource-Aware Agent Design Guide · Intermediate 10-20 min read Architect · Reviewer
Resource-Aware Agent Design helps bound token use, latency, tool calls, model choice, retries, and operating cost before autonomy expands.
- 09 Circuit Breakers, Fallbacks, and Replay Guide · Intermediate 10-20 min read Architect · Reviewer
Circuit Breakers, Fallbacks, and Replay describes the controls that stop bad runs, preserve evidence, and recover from failure.
- 10 Source Map Reference · Intermediate 10-20 min reference Architect · Reviewer
The Source Map connects external agent-pattern references to this book’s chapters and explains how each source informs the catalog.