The Three Agent Patterns Every Engineer Needs in 2026
The article discusses three agent patterns - ReAct, Plan-and-Execute, and Reflection - that every engineer should be familiar with when building AI-powered applications in 2026.
Why it matters
Understanding these three agent patterns is critical for building reliable and efficient AI-powered applications in the near future.
Key Points
- 1ReAct: a simple loop of thinking, acting, observing, and repeating until a final answer is produced
- 2Plan-and-Execute: a two-stage process of planning a sequence of actions and then executing them
- 3Reflection: a more complex pattern that involves introspection, planning, and iterative refinement
Details
The article explains that the three agent patterns - ReAct, Plan-and-Execute, and Reflection - were introduced in academic papers between 2022 and 2023, and every production agent built in 2026 will be a specialization of one of these patterns. Each pattern has trade-offs in terms of latency, cost, and reliability, so engineers need to understand when to use each one. The article provides Python code skeletons and failure modes for each pattern, as well as how they map to the OpenTelemetry GenAI semantic conventions.
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