Agents All the Way Down; A Methodology for Building Custom AI Agents from Substrate to Production

The paper "Agents All the Way Down" presents a comprehensive methodology for building custom AI agents tailored to specific tasks, emphasizing the importance of fit over general capability. It outlines two preconditions—considering the LLM as a software component and utilizing building blocks like function calling and the Model Context Protocol—and three iterative practices: prototyping with a general-purpose agent, creating a command-line interface (CLI) for deployment, and conducting agent-based testing. This framework-free approach, demonstrated through the development of a custom agent for the LAMB platform in a short timeframe, offers practitioners a structured pathway to efficiently create and maintain specialized AI agents.