Stop Defining Agent Workflows in Plain Text: Why Deterministic Code Beats Fragile Prompts

gerardsans · x · 2026-11-12

In a debate on agent orchestration, gerardsans argues that even in modern agentic systems, defining complex workflows in plain text is a classic bad practice.

Key points: turn workflows into code for predictable behavior; never use a distribution-based system as a Turing machine due to fragility — deterministic runtimes exist for a reason; and most researchers lack the software engineering expertise to make good calls here.

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