AI agents are everywhere, but not all are worth building

The Gist

• Hamza Farooq and Jaya Rajwani spent 50+ hours on a guide to AI agent strategy
• Most teams have 5-10 agent initiatives but struggle to prioritize
• The guide breaks down three types of agents and common pitfalls

• AI agents can be categorized into three architectural types: deterministic automation, reasoning and acting agents, and multi-agent networks.
• Most agent opportunities (60-70%) belong to Category 1 (deterministic automation), which are fastest to launch and deliver measurable ROI quickly.
• Teams often misprioritize agent initiatives by treating architecturally different products as if they’re in the same category, leading to ineffective planning.
• Category 2 (reasoning and acting agents) is suitable for 25-30% of agent opportunities, where dynamic decision-making is required.
• Multi-agent networks (Category 3) are typically reserved for later stages when multiple teams must coordinate across domains.
• Organizations often overengineer Category 1 problems with Category 2 frameworks, adding unnecessary complexity and cost.

• Categorize your agent ideas into the three architectural types (deterministic automation, reasoning and acting agents, multi-agent networks) before prioritizing them.
• Start with Category 1 (deterministic automation) projects for quick wins, especially if you have limited AI engineering capacity or need fast ROI.
• Use success metrics tailored to each category (e.g., workflow completion rate for Category 1, task completion rate for Category 2) to evaluate performance.
• Avoid overengineering Category 1 problems with Category 2 frameworks, as this adds unnecessary complexity and cost.

• 60-70% (Percentage of agent opportunities that fit into Category 1 (deterministic automation).)
• 25-30% (Percentage of agent opportunities that fit into Category 2 (reasoning and acting agents).)
• 52% to 87% (Workflow completion rate improvement over 8 weeks for a Category 1 email support agent.)
• $18K/month (Savings achieved by automating 3,000 support emails/month with a Category 1 agent.)
• 71% to 86% (Task completion rate improvement over 4 months for a Category 2 voice + image shopping assistant.)
• $0.12 to $0.08 (Cost per session reduction for the same Category 2 shopping assistant.)