LangChain’s Harrison Chase says agents need trace-driven learning and swappable models

hwchase17 · x · 2026-07-21

LangChain’s Harrison Chase responds to Jeff Huber’s “12-factor companies” essay with two core ideas for agent systems: - **Agents should learn from usage.** He argues that traces are the foundation: you need to observe what happened, collect feedback, and update the system over time. - **Own context, rent intelligence.** Companies should retain their tacit and institutional knowledge while keeping models swappable. He notes the phrasing can be confusing, and points to Satya Nadella’s framing: there is **general intelligence** in the models you rent, but each company also creates its **own intelligence** through usage. Overall, he connects the essay to how LangChain thinks about building compound learning systems for agents.

Original post →

More from coding & agent

coding & agent channel →