AGNTCon + MCPCon Europe 2026

LLM-powered “agents” are quickly becoming the default architectural pattern for AI-enabled systems.

Need automation? Agent.
Need integration? Agent.
Need reasoning? Agent.

But agents are not an upgrade; they are a trade-off. They introduce non-determinism, larger attack surfaces, evaluation complexity, and operational unpredictability.

In this session, we’ll examine three common architectural patterns for LLM-enabled systems:
- Deterministic workflows (state machines, orchestrated pipelines)
- Service-oriented architectures with LLM augmentation
- Fully agentic orchestration with dynamic tool use

Rather than comparing features, we’ll analyze these patterns across real engineering constraints:
- Failure isolation and blast radius
- Latency and cost predictability
- Observability and debugging complexity
- Security boundaries and permission scoping
- Evaluation and regression testing strategy
- Operational burden over time

This talk offers a practical decision framework grounded in system design principles. You’ll leave with a mental model and checklist to evaluate whether an agent is justified, or whether a simpler architecture will deliver more predictable, resilient outcomes.