Agentic Systems Are Repeating Old Engineering Mistakes

Core Question

Why do agentic systems fail despite strong capabilities?

Main Idea

They ignore known engineering principles.

Failure Modes

• Monolithic agents
• Raw context passing
• Weak artifacts
• Role confusion
• Over-parallelization

Parallels

• Monolithic agent = team with no ownership
• Raw context = passing entire Slack logs
• Vague prompts = unclear specs

Insight

These are not AI failures — they are system design failures

Hook

“We are rebuilding early software mistakes with better models.”

Transition

Even well-structured systems hit limits. Those limits define what is possible.