Agent Engineering
Why
latent.space
smol.ai/news
How is AI Engineering doing?
The Evolution of the AI Engineer
Rise of AI Engineer
The 1000x AI Engineer
AI Engineering Without Borders
The Evolution of the AI Engineer (old)
The Evolution of the AI Engineer (now)
MLE POV
SWE POV
The Evolution of the AI Engineer (ideal)
MLE
SWE
AIE
The Evolution of the AI Engineer (ideal)
MLE
SWE
AIE
test time
compute
inference time
compute
reasoning
why we are
all-in on agents
The Evolution of the AI Engineer conf
how we chose
your speakers
just make everything agentic?
how we chose
your speakers
vendor pitches
have you tried rubbing an agent on it?
Agent + RAG = Agentic RAG!
Agent + CodeGen = Bolt! Windsurf Cascade!
Agent + Search = Deep Research!
Agent + Vision = Computer Use Agent!
Agent + Voice = SuperDial! Method Financial!
Agent + Wearable = Bee!
Agent + Finance = BrightWave/Bloomberg/BlackRock!
Agent + Money = Solana/Stripe!
“2025 is the year of agents”
“name a buzzword everyone is tired of hearing”
https://latent.space/p/adept - March 2024
go ahead
define “agent”
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August 19, 2024
Definitions of Agent based on POV
MLE
SWE
AIE
"A system that perceives its environment through sensors and acts upon that environment through actuators to achieve specific goals."
???
"LLM calls in a for loop"
“An AI system component that performs non-trivial, multi-step operations that previously would have required a human.” - @DanielMiessler
“An AI system that's capable of carrying out and completing long running, open ended tasks in the real world.” - @Dan_Jeffries1
LLM Control Flow
Encoded Intent
Long-Running Memory
Multi-Step Planning
Delegated Authority
“a system that is trusted to make impactful decisions on behalf of me”
Tool-using LLMs
“agent = llm + memory + planning + tools + while loop” - swyx
"The more agentic an application is, the more an LLM decides the control flow of the application" - @hwchase17
Metaphors
Reductiveness
“control system for future states” - @plinz
Specific Examples
Code Interpreter
Deep Research
Operator
"LLM calls in a for loop"
“An agent is a system that can pursue a goal-oriented behavior, adapt along the way to achieve its goals.”
OpenAI’s new Agents Definition
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August 19, 2024
soooo
why now?
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August 19, 2024
why agents now?
Better capabilities
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August 19, 2024
Better tool use
100% Structured Output, BFCLv3
Better tools (AX)
MCP, Sandboxes, Browsers, Search
Memory/RAG frameworks/DBs
Long inference/reasoning
Better/More data
MMLU/GPQA Saturation
model diversity
1000x cheaper GPT4
RL Finetuning
why agents now?
Better capabilities
Better tool use
100% Structured Output, BFCLv3
Better tools (AX)
MCP, Sandboxes, Browsers, Search
Memory/RAG frameworks/DBs
Model diversity
GPT5, DeepSeek r3, Gemini 2, Claude 4, Grok 3, Llama 4, Qwen 3, TML, SSI
1000x cheaper GPT4
Cheap inference, Open models, Distillation improvements, VC funding
RL Finetuning
DPO, GRPO, Just saying “wait…”
Charge what it delivers to customer
Not free/$20/what it costs to make
Outcomes vs Cost-plus
Multi-agent research
Building Effective Agents, LLM as Judge
CrewAI, AutoGen, PydanticAI…
10x Inference Speed
30 tok/s -> 1000+ tok/s
Long inference/reasoning
Better/More data
MMLU/GPQA Saturation
why agents now?
Better capabilities
Long inference/reasoning
latent.space/p/jan-2024
100% Structured Output, BFCLv3
latent.space/p/benchmarks-201
Better tool use
MCP, Sandboxes, Browsers, Search
latent.space/p/browserbase
Better tools (AX)
Model diversity
GPT5, DeepSeek r3, Gemini 2, Claude 4, Grok 3, Llama 4, Qwen 3, TML, SSI
latent.space/p/2024-startups
1000x cheaper GPT4
Cheap inference, Open models, Distillation improvements, VC funding
latent.space/p/reasoning-price-war
DPO, GRPO, Just saying “wait…”
see Will Brown’s talk
RL Finetuning
Charge what it delivers to customer
Not free/$20/what it costs to make
latent.space/p/bret
Outcomes vs Cost-plus
Building Effective Agents, LLM as Judge
CrewAI, AutoGen, PydanticAI…
latent.space/p/2024-agents
30 tok/s -> 1000+ tok/s
latent.space/p/inference-fast-and-slow
Multi-agent research
10x Inference Speed
Agent use cases
Killer Use Cases
Up and Coming
Please Stop Making Fetch Happen
looking at you y combinator
Agent PMF — ChatGPT.com
https://chatgpt.com/share/67b7fbe4-6204-8012-ba5c-21574623a93e
Agent PMF — ChatGPT.com
https://chatgpt.com/share/67b7fbe4-6204-8012-ba5c-21574623a93e
ChatGPT stopped
growing for a year
with GPT4/4 Turbo
1B users by 2026 from Reasoning/Agents
The Evolution of the AI Engineer (ideal)
MLE
SWE
AIE
test time
compute
inference time
compute
reasoning
models
agents
software
ML pipeline
ADLC
SDLC
(Bonus) AI Eng Advice
Thank You! Enjoy the show!
(btw get in early on the next one: ai.engineer/2025)
swyx.io / @swyx
latent.space / youtube.com/@latentspacepod
ai.engineer / @aiDotEngineer
smol.ai/news / @smol_ai
Thank You
(enjoy the show!)
tweet @ swyx to say hi!
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Project Two
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