Part II · Patterns And Practice/Chapter 06
06
Runtime Orchestration
What happens when the workflow actually runs: graphs, checkpoints, handoffs, parallel agents, human interrupts, and framework choices.
The gist
- Runtimes earn their place by solving real pain: resume, branching, retries, parallelism, approval.
- Start with the failure mode, not the graph.
- Wrap deterministic code around probabilistic calls.
Module 7: Runtime Orchestration
This is where workflows become running systems.
Read
Learn the runtime shapes
- sequential agents
- parallel agents
- loop agents
- graph nodes and edges
- state and checkpointing
- thread and session identity
- long running tasks
- human in the loop interrupts
- handoffs versus agents as tools
- deterministic code wrapped around probabilistic calls
Build a tiny runner for intake -> plan -> context -> execute -> evaluate -> final. Run it with one agent first. Then split one step into a specialist. Then add one checkpoint. Then add one human approval gate.
Runtime frameworks are useful when they solve a real pain:
- resume
- branching
- retries
- parallelism
- traceability
- human approval
- deployment
Do not start with the graph because graphs feel advanced. Start with the failure mode.