Frank Coyle

Anthropic's CCA Exam as a Field-Guide for Agentic Engineering — Frank Coyle, UC Berkeley

Aug 8, 2026 · 20:08

Frank Coyle uses Anthropic's Claude Certified Architect exam as a field guide for agentic engineering: anti-patterns—knowing what not to do—are the key to agent design. In a customer support loop, the anti-pattern is calling the model and using its response directly; the model cannot execute tools, only hands back parameters, so branch on the stop reason, which also flags partial answers when tokens run out. For multi-agent research, loading one agent with every tool is the carpenter with plumbing gear; instead specialize subagents with one or two tools and give each only its own slice. A critic agent gets the claim and evidence but not the reasoning, to avoid groupthink, and subtask output is forked so only summaries return, with compaction past 150,000 tokens. Batch mode runs the same work at 50% lower token cost if you can wait 24 hours.

Why Agentic Systems Need Ontologies — Frank Coyle, UC Berkeley

Jul 23, 2026 · 21:18

Frank Coyle argues that most agent failures, from brittle tools to fragile handoffs, stem from missing formal ontologies as logical guardrails. He proposes neurosymbolic AI: probabilistic reasoning inside, logic outside. An ontology is typed entities, relationships, and constraints expressed with RDFS and OWL, letting you specify a payment status must be one of three values, that a customer and support rep are different, or that an order can only be refunded once. Wrapping a Claude tool use loop with a validator—Pydantic at the door for types, ontology at the ledger for results—catches errors like a second refund on the same order, a payout sent to the support desk instead of the buyer, or an order status of 'probably shipped' that English instructions cannot reliably prevent.