Decoder. plain-English AI glossary

Agentic framework

▲ Rising

Also called Agent framework

A library that handles the plumbing of building agents — the loop, tools, memory, and error handling — so you focus on the task, not the wiring.

Think of it like

Rails for agent development — it gives you the structure so you're not reinventing the wheel for every agent.

Example

Pick LangGraph, CrewAI, or Anthropic's Agent SDK, define your tools and goals, and the framework handles the orchestration loop.

How it actually works

Frameworks like LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, and Anthropic's Agent SDK abstract the think-act-observe loop, tool registration, memory management, and error recovery. They differ in philosophy: some are graph-based (LangGraph), some are role-based multi-agent (CrewAI), some minimal (smolagents).

For product teams

The libraries that handle agent plumbing — pick one to move fast, evaluate carefully to avoid lock-in.

For engineers

Orchestration libraries (LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen) abstracting the agent loop, tools, and memory.

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