Tips for building AI agents

18 minutesAdvancedBuilderAnthropicAutomations

Anthropic. Three Anthropic engineers walking through the most common pitfalls they see — agents that don't know when to stop, over-prompting in the system prompt instead of fixing the environment, the cost of multi-agent designs nobody actually needed. Useful right after Barry's talk; you will recognise the same patterns from a different angle.

AI Expert note

The pitfalls catalogue doubles as a review checklist: stopping rules, prompt-versus-environment fixes, and whether the multi-agent design was ever needed.

What you should get from this

Recognize common agent-building pitfalls before adding multiple agents, complex prompts or hidden state.

Watch or know first

Watch the primary pick first — this assumes the same baseline and adds field pitfalls.

Last reviewed: May 18, 2026

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