Agentic design patterns: The missing link between AI demos and enterprise value

The enterprise AI market is currently nursing a massive hangover. For the past two years, decision-makers have been inundated with demos of autonomous agents booking flights, writing code, and analyzing data. Yet, the reality on the ground is starkly different. While experimentation is at an all-time high, deployment of reliable, autonomous agents in production remains challenging. 

A recent study by MIT’s Project NANDA highlighted a sobering statistic: Roughly 95% of AI projects fail to deliver bottom-line value. They hit walls when moved from the sandbox to the real world, often breaking under the weight of edge cases, hallucinations, or integration failures.

According to Antonio Gulli, a senior engineer at Google and the Director of the Engineering Office of the CTO, the industry is suffering from a fundamental misunderstanding of what agents actually are. We have treated them as magic boxes rather than complex software systems. "AI engineering, especially with ...