Simplifying the Development of Agentic Systems with Traditional Tools

The article examines the trend of agentic system development, highlighting that while there are many grand concepts such as agentic memory and context engineering, the fundamental components are akin to traditional processes and database management. Utilizing a practical example, the Burn demo app, it illustrates how agentic features can be created with conventional tools like Postgres and the Phoenix framework, which runs on Elixir. By combining these tools with real-time syncing, the complexities of agentic systems can be addressed effectively without needing an entirely new stack. The author emphasizes that all functionalities, from user interactions in chat threads to agent processes, derive from standard database rows and events. The back-end agents, which manage interactions with a LLM, respond dynamically to database changes, showcasing an effective integration of Elixir's capabilities for developing agentic systems in a robust and scalable manner.