2
The Agentic AI Foundation
This chapter builds the foundation. Before we start composing agents into larger systems, we need to be precise about what makes a system genuinely agentic, how the Reason-Act-Observe loop works, and what changes once a model is given tools and the ability to act.
In the previous chapter, we established why agentic systems fail on Day 2: organizational debt, governance gaps, and the significant gap between Vibe Coding and Agentic Engineering. You have probably seen the LinkedIn iceberg memes that capture this problem well. At the tip of the proverbial iceberg sits the apparent magic of vibe coding: a polished interface and the immediate gratification of a result that seems to work. Beneath the surface lies the much ...
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