Part I. Foundations¶
The first part answers the main question: what should a modern secure agent architecture look like if it is designed not as a toy, but as a platform product.
What must be understood before implementation¶
- An agent is not the same as an LLM. The LLM makes only part of the decisions.
- Security cannot be a wrapper added after the MVP. It must be embedded into the runtime.
- Most production use cases benefit less from maximum autonomy than from the right combination of
workflow + guarded autonomy. - Multi-agent design is useful not for aesthetics but for context isolation, team ownership, and parallelism.12
Outcome of this part¶
By the end of Part I, the reader should have:
- a reference platform diagram for safe agents;
- criteria for choosing between workflow, single-agent, and subagents;
- a list of mandatory layers without which the system will be fragile;
- a vocabulary for discussing architecture with platform, security, and product teams.