Types of Agents
Agents come in different forms depending on their complexity and the tasks they handle:Single-Purpose Agents
Designed to do one specific task very well, such as answering customer support questions or scheduling meetings.
Orchestrator Agents
Orchestrator Agents act as managers. They break down complex problems and delegate tasks to other sub-agents.
Multimodal Agents
Agents that can process and generate different types of data, such as text, images, and audio.
Autonomous Agents
Highly independent Agents that can run continuously, adapt to new information, and learn over time without human intervention.
Approaches to Developing Agents
Building an Agent involves giving it the right tools and instructions:- Prompt Engineering: The simplest approach. You give a large language model (LLM) detailed instructions and examples of how to behave.
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG): The Agent searches external documents and data.
- Tool Use and APIs: The Agent gets access to external tools (like calculators, web browsers, or your company’s APIs) so it can perform actions in the real world.
- Agent Frameworks: Developers often use frameworks like LangChain or AutoGen to build complex systems where multiple agents work together.
Approaches to Testing Agents
Testing agents is difficult because their outputs are not always predictable. Tools like Vijil provide a platform for you to Evaluate and Defend your agents. Agents are commonly tested in these three ways:| Approach | How It Works | Limitation |
|---|---|---|
| Manual Testing | Humans interact with the agent to check behavior | Slow, does not scale, misses adversarial edge cases |
| Unit Testing | Tests individual components in isolation | Misses failures that only emerge when the full system runs |
| Automated Evaluation | Sends hundreds of adversarial Probes across Scenarios | Requires agent registration and Harness configuration |
Managing Your Agents as an Owner
As an Agent Owner, your focus is on the business value and safety of the Agent. You need to ensure that the agent follows company policies and provides a good user experience. Vijil gives you the tools to:- Set Policies: Define what the Agent is allowed and not allowed to do.
- Define Personas.: Test how the Agent reacts to different types of users.
- Run Evaluations: How your AI agent against targeted scenarios to measure its trustworthiness.
- Protect Agents: Set up runtime protection for your AI agents with Dome guardrails.