🦄 Humans as Tools: Async Agents and Durable Execution
Agents are great, but for the most accuracy-sensitive scenarios, we some times want a human in the loop. Today we'll discuss techniques for how to make this possible. We'll dive deep into concepts from our 4/22 session on 12-factor agents and extend them to handle asynchronous operations where agents need to contact humans for help, feedback, or approvals across a variety of channels.
Project Details
Open in GitHubHumans as Tools: Async Agents and Durable Execution
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMhH5_ju3-I"></a>
This session builds on our 12-factor agents workshop to explore async agents and durable execution patterns. We'll learn how to build agents that can pause, contact humans for feedback or approval, and resume execution based on human responses.
What You'll Learn
- How to implement async agent patterns with human-in-the-loop workflows
- State management for durable agent execution
- Different channels for human interaction (CLI, HTTP, email)
- Webhook integration for non-blocking human approvals
- Testing strategies for async agent workflows
Key Takeaways
- Two types of human interaction - deterministic (code enforces human approval) and non-deterministic (agent chooses to contact a human)
- approver might not be the person interacting with the chatbot
- State management is key to building agents that can pause/resume for human interaction
- Separate concerns of inner loop (agent) and outer loop (human interaction)
Whiteboards
inner vs outer loop
deterministic vs non-deterministic human approval
base agent architecture refresh
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