Agent deck generation needs strict schemas and a deterministic fallback, not a magic API call
Live-Purpose-641 · reddit · 2026-07-26
- The author describes a production setup where an agent must generate a pitch deck at the end of a research task.
- A direct free-form API call failed in practice because prompts became bloated, jobs timed out, and failures had no graceful path.
- The fix was to treat deck generation as a real tool: a strict schema, async polling with a max-attempts ceiling, and a deterministic HTML-to-PDF fallback.
- The author used Gamma's API for the primary render, but notes the monthly credit cap is small, so a fallback is mandatory in production.
- The broader lesson: generation APIs need schemas and failure modes, not magical “final steps.”
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