Planning & Task Decomposition

Complex tasks require planning. Without a plan, agents attempt to solve everything in a single linear pass, often losing track of sub-goals or repeating work. This lesson covers the plan-and-execute pattern, hierarchical planning, task graphs, re-planning on failure, and how to validate plans before execution.

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Why Planning Matters

Consider a complex request:

"Research the top 5 AI startups in healthcare, compare their funding, products, and team sizes, then write a summary report."

A naive agent would try to do everything in one long chain. A planning agent first breaks this into sub-tasks:

Plan:
  1. Search for top AI startups in healthcare
  2. For each startup, gather:
     a. Funding information
     b. Product descriptions
     c. Team size data
  3. Compile all data into a comparison table
  4. Write a summary report

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The Plan-and-Execute Pattern