Past “Immediate and Pray” – O’Reilly

TL;DR:

• Enterprise AI groups are discovering that purely agentic approaches (dynamically chaining LLM calls) don’t ship the reliability wanted for manufacturing programs.
• The prompt-and-pray mannequin—the place enterprise logic lives solely in prompts—creates programs which can be unreliable, inefficient, and unimaginable to take care of at scale.
• A shift towards structured automation, which separates conversational potential from enterprise logic execution, is required for enterprise-grade reliability.
• This strategy delivers substantial advantages: constant execution, decrease prices, higher safety, and programs that may be maintained like conventional software program.

Image this: The present state of conversational AI is sort of a scene from Hieronymus Bosch’s Backyard of Earthly Delights. At first look, it’s mesmerizing—a paradise of potential. AI programs promise seamless conversations, clever brokers, and easy integration. However look carefully and chaos emerges: a false paradise all alongside.

Your organization’s AI assistant confidently tells a buyer it’s processed their pressing withdrawal request—besides it hasn’t, as a result of it misinterpreted the API documentation. Or maybe it cheerfully informs your CEO it’s archived these delicate board paperwork—into solely the improper folder. These aren’t hypothetical situations; they’re the each day actuality for organizations betting their operations on the prompt-and-pray strategy to AI implementation.

The Evolution of Expectations

For years, the AI world was pushed by scaling legal guidelines: the empirical statement that bigger fashions and greater datasets led to proportionally higher efficiency. This fueled a perception that merely making fashions greater would remedy deeper points like accuracy, understanding, and reasoning. Nonetheless, there’s rising consensus that the period of scaling legal guidelines is coming to an finish. Incremental positive aspects are more durable to realize, and organizations betting on ever-more-powerful LLMs are starting to see diminishing returns.

Towards this backdrop, expectations for conversational AI have skyrocketed. Keep in mind the easy chatbots of yesterday? They dealt with fundamental FAQs with preprogrammed responses. At this time’s enterprises need AI programs that may:

• Navigate advanced workflows throughout a number of departments
• Interface with lots of of inner APIs and companies
• Deal with delicate operations with safety and compliance in thoughts
• Scale reliably throughout 1000’s of customers and thousands and thousands of interactions

Nonetheless, it’s necessary to carve out what these programs are—and are usually not. After we discuss conversational AI, we’re referring to programs designed to have a dialog, orchestrate workflows, and make choices in actual time. These are programs that have interaction in conversations and combine with APIs however don’t create stand-alone content material like emails, shows, or paperwork. Use instances like “write this electronic mail for me” and “create a deck for me” fall into content material technology, which lies exterior this scope. This distinction is crucial as a result of the challenges and options for conversational AI are distinctive to programs that function in an interactive, real-time atmosphere.

We’ve been informed 2025 would be the Yr of Brokers, however on the similar time there’s a rising consensus from the likes of Anthropic, Hugging Face, and different main voices that advanced workflows require extra management than merely trusting an LLM to determine all the things out.

The Immediate-and-Pray Downside

The usual playbook for a lot of conversational AI implementations right now seems to be one thing like this:

1. Gather related context and documentation
2. Craft a immediate explaining the duty
3. Ask the LLM to generate a plan or response
4. Belief that it really works as supposed

This strategy—which we name immediate and pray—appears engaging at first. It’s fast to implement and demos effectively. Nevertheless it harbors critical points that turn out to be obvious at scale:

Unreliability

Each interplay turns into a brand new alternative for error. The identical question can yield completely different outcomes relying on how the mannequin interprets the context that day. When coping with enterprise workflows, this variability is unacceptable.

To get a way of the unreliable nature of the prompt-and-pray strategy, think about that Hugging Face stories the state-of-the-art on operate calling is effectively beneath 90% correct. 90% accuracy for software program will usually be a deal-breaker, however the promise of brokers rests on the flexibility to chain them collectively: even 5 in a row will fail over 40% of the time!

Inefficiency

Dynamic technology of responses and plans is computationally costly. Every interplay requires a number of API calls, token processing, and runtime decision-making. This interprets to larger prices and slower response occasions.

Complexity

Debugging these programs is a nightmare. When an LLM doesn’t do what you need, your major recourse is to vary the enter. However the one strategy to know the influence that your change can have is trial and error. When your utility contains many steps, every of which makes use of the output from one LLM name as enter for one more, you’re left sifting by means of chains of LLM reasoning, attempting to grasp why the mannequin made sure choices. Improvement velocity grinds to a halt.

Safety

Letting LLMs make runtime choices about enterprise logic creates pointless danger. The OWASP AI Safety & Privateness Information particularly warns towards “Extreme Company”—giving AI programs an excessive amount of autonomous decision-making energy. But many present implementations do precisely that, exposing organizations to potential breaches and unintended outcomes.

A Higher Manner Ahead: Structured Automation

The choice isn’t to desert AI’s capabilities however to harness them extra intelligently by means of structured automation. Structured automation is a improvement strategy that separates conversational AI’s pure language understanding from deterministic workflow execution. This implies utilizing LLMs to interpret person enter and make clear what they need, whereas counting on predefined, testable workflows for crucial operations. By separating these issues, structured automation ensures that AI-powered programs are dependable, environment friendly, and maintainable.

This strategy separates issues which can be usually muddled in prompt-and-pray programs:

• Understanding what the person desires: Use LLMs for his or her power in understanding, manipulating, and producing pure language
• Enterprise logic execution: Depend on predefined, examined workflows for crucial operations
• State administration: Preserve clear management over system state and transitions

The important thing precept is straightforward: Generate as soon as, run reliably eternally. As an alternative of getting LLMs make runtime choices about enterprise logic, use them to assist create strong, reusable workflows that may be examined, versioned, and maintained like conventional software program.

By holding the enterprise logic separate from conversational capabilities, structured automation ensures that programs stay dependable, environment friendly, and safe. This strategy additionally reinforces the boundary between generative conversational duties (the place the LLM thrives) and operational decision-making (which is finest dealt with by deterministic, software-like processes).

By “predefined, examined workflows,” we imply creating workflows throughout the design section, utilizing AI to help with concepts and patterns. These workflows are then applied as conventional software program, which may be examined, versioned, and maintained. This strategy is effectively understood in software program engineering and contrasts sharply with constructing brokers that depend on runtime choices—an inherently much less dependable and harder-to-maintain mannequin.

Alex Strick van Linschoten and the group at ZenML have not too long ago compiled a database of 400+ (and rising!) LLM deployments within the enterprise. Not surprisingly, they found that structured automation delivers considerably extra worth throughout the board than the prompt-and-pray strategy:

There’s a hanging disconnect between the promise of absolutely autonomous brokers and their presence in customer-facing deployments. This hole isn’t shocking after we look at the complexities concerned. The fact is that profitable deployments are likely to favor a extra constrained strategy, and the explanations are illuminating…
Take Lindy.ai’s journey: they started with open-ended prompts, dreaming of absolutely autonomous brokers. Nonetheless, they found that reliability improved dramatically after they shifted to structured workflows. Equally, Rexera discovered success by implementing choice timber for high quality management, successfully constraining their brokers’ choice area to enhance predictability and reliability.

The prompt-and-pray strategy is tempting as a result of it demos effectively and feels quick. However beneath the floor, it’s a patchwork of brittle improvisation and runaway prices. The antidote isn’t abandoning the promise of AI—it’s designing programs with a transparent separation of issues: conversational fluency dealt with by LLMs, enterprise logic powered by structured workflows.

What Does Structured Automation Look Like in Apply?

Take into account a typical buyer assist situation: a buyer messages your AI assistant saying, “Hey, you tousled my order!”

• The LLM interprets the person’s message, asking clarifying questions like, “What’s lacking out of your order?”
• Having obtained the related particulars, the structured workflow queries backend information to find out the problem: Had been gadgets shipped individually? Are they nonetheless in transit? Had been they out of inventory?
• Based mostly on this data, the structured workflow determines the suitable choices: a refund, reshipment, or one other decision. If wanted, it requests extra data from the shopper, leveraging the LLM to deal with the dialog.

Right here, the LLM excels at navigating the complexities of human language and dialogue. However the crucial enterprise logic—like querying databases, checking inventory, and figuring out resolutions—lives in predefined workflows.

This strategy ensures:

• Reliability: The identical logic applies persistently throughout all customers.
• Safety: Delicate operations are tightly managed.
• Effectivity: Builders can check, model, and enhance workflows like conventional software program.

Structured automation bridges one of the best of each worlds: conversational fluency powered by LLMs and reliable execution dealt with by workflows.

What In regards to the Lengthy Tail?

A standard objection to structured automation is that it doesn’t scale to deal with the “lengthy tail” of duties—these uncommon, unpredictable situations that appear unimaginable to predefine. However the fact is that structured automation simplifies edge-case administration by making LLM improvisation protected and measurable.

Right here’s the way it works: Low-risk or uncommon duties may be dealt with flexibly by LLMs within the quick time period. Every interplay is logged, patterns are analyzed, and workflows are created for duties that turn out to be frequent or crucial. At this time’s LLMs are very able to producing the code for a structured workflow given examples of profitable conversations. This iterative strategy turns the lengthy tail right into a manageable pipeline of recent performance, with the data that by selling these duties into structured workflows we achieve reliability, explainability, and effectivity.

From Runtime to Design Time

Let’s revisit the sooner instance: a buyer messages your AI assistant saying, “Hey, you tousled my order!”

The Immediate-and-Pray Strategy

1. Dynamically interprets messages and generates responses
2. Makes real-time API calls to execute operations
3. Depends on improvisation to resolve points

This strategy results in unpredictable outcomes, safety dangers, and excessive debugging prices.

A Structured Automation Strategy

1. Makes use of LLMs to interpret person enter and collect particulars
2. Executes crucial duties by means of examined, versioned workflows
3. Depends on structured programs for constant outcomes

The Advantages Are Substantial:

• Predictable execution: Workflows behave persistently each time
• Decrease prices: Decreased token utilization and processing overhead
• Higher safety: Clear boundaries round delicate operations
• Simpler upkeep: Commonplace software program improvement practices apply

The Function of People

For edge instances, the system escalates to a human with full context, guaranteeing delicate situations are dealt with with care. This human-in-the-loop mannequin combines AI effectivity with human oversight for a dependable and collaborative expertise.

This technique may be prolonged past expense stories to different domains like buyer assist, IT ticketing, and inner HR workflows—anyplace conversational AI must reliably combine with backend programs.

Constructing for Scale

The way forward for enterprise conversational AI isn’t in giving fashions extra runtime autonomy—it’s in utilizing their capabilities extra intelligently to create dependable, maintainable programs. This implies:

• Treating AI-powered programs with the identical engineering rigor as conventional software program
• Utilizing LLMs as instruments for technology and understanding, not as runtime choice engines
• Constructing programs that may be understood, maintained, and improved by regular engineering groups

The query isn’t methods to automate all the things without delay however how to take action in a manner that scales, works reliably, and delivers constant worth.

Taking Motion

For technical leaders and choice makers, the trail ahead is obvious:

The period of immediate and pray may be starting, however you are able to do higher. As enterprises mature of their AI implementations, the main target should shift from spectacular demos to dependable, scalable programs. Structured automation gives the framework for this transition, combining the ability of AI with the reliability of conventional software program engineering.

The way forward for enterprise AI isn’t nearly having the most recent fashions—it’s about utilizing them correctly to construct programs that work persistently, scale successfully, and ship actual worth. The time to make this transition is now.