Paweł Huryn (@huryn): "How to decide if you need an agent: (an improved Microsoft AI Agent Decision Tree) Step 1: Focus on the nature of the task. Structured, repetitive tasks are best for traditional automation. If that’s not the case: Step 2: If the main goal is just to find and summarize inform…"

Make money doing the work you believe in

Paweł Huryn

Dec 12

The Product Compass

How to decide if you need an agent:

(an improved Microsoft AI Agent Decision Tree)

Step 1: Focus on the nature of the task. Structured, repetitive tasks are best for traditional automation.

If that’s not the case:

Step 2: If the main goal is just to find and summarize information from documents, a specialized ready-to-use RAG might be the right path.

If that’s not the case:

Step 3: Check for off-the-shelf solutions. They offer the quickest time to value.

If you can’t find one:

Step 4: Microsoft recommends choosing between a single agent or multiple agents based on compliance and complexity.

I’d argue a better heuristic is the number of roles and domains involved. Agents should stay small, specialized, and focused.
Keep in mind this is more of an implementation detail and shouldn’t be framed as a requirement. Designing agentic systems is way less deterministic than traditional software.
Microsoft missed that.

If a single agent fails:

Step 5: Splitting the responsibilities more (manager, reviewer, specialist_1, specialist_2, etc.) and evaluating each step/transition across a diverse set of prompts may help.

—

Bottom line: Even with AI improving like crazy, you don’t need a 200 IQ LLM to add two numbers, call an API, or perform a deterministic operation.
Using a visual orchestration or code is cheaper, faster, and more reliable.
Save agents for when you really need them (cognition).

Hope that helps!

(I mixed Nano🍌with Canva as an experiment)

—

The official Microsoft framework: learn.microsoft.com/en-…

—

P.S. Find this helpful? See (free trial):