Agentic Architectures

Everything you need to know about agentic AI architectures in one visual. 6 shapes to know before you build anything that acts on its own.

1. Code-act agents: These generate and run code themselves, pairing reasoning with actual computation.
2. ReAct agents: They think, act, and observe on repeat, sharpening each move based on what came before.
3. Agentic RAG: Beyond fetching documents, this plans the search itself, weighs which sources deserve trust, and pulls it all into one coherent answer.
4. Tool use via MCP: A shared protocol letting an AI system reach out to external tools without a custom connector every time.
5. Self-reflective agents: They review their own output, spot where it fell short, and adjust before the next attempt.
6. Multi-agent systems: Several specialised agents coordinating and passing information back and forth to handle something too large for one.

Understanding these architectures is one thing. Building with them is another.