// Quick reference
Cheat sheet
One line per pattern. Use it when you are mid-design and need a nudge, not a lecture.
// Foundations
Foundations
- ReActWhen the next step depends on what the last tool returned.
- Plan-and-ExecuteWhen you can sketch the whole plan before touching tools.
- Reflection / Self-CritiqueWhen a first draft is cheap and a second pass catches real mistakes.
- Tool Use / Function CallingWhen the model must call structured tools instead of inventing facts.
// Orchestration
Orchestration
- Orchestrator-SubagentWhen one agent cannot hold all skills or context without thrashing.
- SupervisorWhen workers need a referee that routes and vetoes, not a planner that drafts.
- Hierarchical AgentsWhen goals nest: strategy → tactics → tools, with clear ownership per layer.
- Sequential PipelineWhen stages are fixed and each step’s output is the next step’s only input.
- Parallel Fan-Out / Fan-InWhen independent sub-tasks can run at once and merge into one answer.
- MapReduceWhen you shatter a big corpus into identical map jobs, then reduce.
- Debate / AdversarialWhen two opposing arguments surface risks a single pass would miss.
// Feedback loops
Feedback loops
- Evaluator-OptimizerWhen a scorer can reject work until an optimizer improves it.
- Critic-ActorWhen a dedicated critic reviews every actor draft before it ships.
- Self-Healing / Retry LoopWhen failures are expected and a bounded retry with diagnosis beats giving up.
- HITL (Human-in-the-loop)When irreversible or high-stakes actions need a human gate.