A Two-Dimensional Framework for AI Agent Design Patterns: Cognitive Function and Execution Topology
arXiv:2605.13850v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Existing frameworks for LLM-based agent architectures describe systems from a single perspective: industry guides (Anthropic, Google, LangChain) focus on execution topology — how data flows — while cognitive science surveys focus on cognitive function — what the agent does. Neither axis alone disambiguates architecturally distinct systems: the same Orchestrator-Workers topology can implement Plan-and-Execute, Hierarchical Delegation, or Adversarial Verification — three patterns with fundamentally different failure modes and design trade-offs. We propose a two-dimensional […]