Pattern Field Guide
A clean, Google Cloud Architecture-style reference to 91 patterns across 13 primary sources, organised into 3 tiers. Pick a source below to see its patterns — one paragraph, a diagram, a use case, and the trade-offs for each. For full treatment (context, forces, anti-patterns, standards mesh) of the 61 composable patterns, see the Deep Catalogue.
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The Architectural Blueprint for Agentic AI
This page groups AI agent patterns by where they first came from — big companies like Google and Anthropic, research papers, and open-source projects built by developers around the world. Instead of showing every pattern at once, it sorts them into 13 source groups so you can see who invented each idea.
Knowing where a pattern came from matters because it shows the idea has been tried and tested by a real team, not just made up. It also helps you trust a pattern more when you see that several different companies came up with the same solution on their own. Pick any source card below to see all of its patterns, each with a picture, a short description, and when to use it.
Foundational Industry & Research
The patterns with the strongest academic or foundational pedigree. Most patterns in later tiers are specialisations, implementations, or compositions of these.
Anthropic
8Building Effective Agents (Schluntz & Ingham, Dec 2024)
Foundational · blogView patterns →Google Cloud
12Choose a Design Pattern for Your Agentic AI System (Oct 2025)
Foundational · cloud docView patterns →Antonio Gulli
17Agentic Design Patterns (Google/Springer, Dec 2025) — 21 chapters
Foundational · bookView patterns →Academic Foundations
17Key papers behind every major pattern
Foundational · arXiv / conferencesView patterns →Hyperscaler & Vendor References (Cross-Validation)
Hyperscaler and vendor implementations that adopt, name, and sometimes specialise Tier 1 patterns. Provides cross-validation — when five vendors independently ship the same pattern, it is a real pattern. Many entries are cross-references; see xref notes.
Microsoft
7Agent Factory · Azure AI Foundry · Semantic Kernel
Hyperscaler · cloud docView patterns →AWS
4Foundations of Agentic AI on AWS · Bedrock Agents
Hyperscaler · prescriptive guidanceView patterns →Salesforce
4Enterprise General Intelligence · Agentforce
Vendor · enterprise SaaSView patterns →OpenAI
3Function calling · Assistants API · Swarm (experimental)
Vendor · APIView patterns →IBM & Others
2IBM watsonx · various vendors
Vendor · enterpriseView patterns →Community & Curated Catalogues
Framework-specific idioms and community-curated catalogues. Many of these are implementation patterns rather than architectural patterns — how to realise Tier 1 patterns in a specific framework — but they are widely referenced and worth cataloguing.
LangChain / LangGraph
5Framework-specific idioms for stateful agents
Framework · OSSView patterns →Hugging Face
3Agents Course · smolagents · Transformers
Framework · OSSView patterns →Survey Papers & Taxonomies
4Academic syntheses of agentic patterns
Community · arXivView patterns →Community Curations
5Awesome lists · blog syntheses · cognitive-architecture papers
CommunityView patterns →