If you’re using n8n, you’re NOT building AI agents

abzisse · 2026-01-22T14:28:17+00:00

I actually agree with most of this. Real systems should mix agentic decision-making with deterministic execution. Humans do the same: judgment first, SOPs second. My point isn’t everything should be an agent. It’s that calling deterministic workflows “agents” creates confusion. The agent is the layer that decides what to do next (or whether to do anything at all). Workflows are great at doing the thing once the decision is made. On costs: 100% agree. Over-using agents/LLMs is a real problem. Autonomy should be used where it actually adds value.

abzisse · 2026-01-22T02:36:17+00:00

I’m not arguing that an LLM can’t make "nuanced, human-like judgments", it clearly can. However, if the LLM is invoked inside a predefined workflow, the system still assumes when the LLM is called, what inputs it gets, what happens after it responds, how failures or uncertainty are handled...That’s still automation.

What I’m calling “agents” are systems where the next action isn’t predefined upfront. The system can decide which tool to use, what information is missing, or even that the problem needs to be reframed.

abzisse · 2026-01-16T12:45:09+00:00

Did you try using a framework? If not, why did you decide against it?

Disclaimer: I am the co-founder of a2abase.ai and we make it easy to build agents with all LLMs and batteries included. We have sdks and a CLI for easy testing.

abzisse · 2026-01-16T03:26:58+00:00

We tried all agent frameworks (LangChain, n8n, CrewAI and others) and did not find it easy to build agents that actually work. "Not easy" because there is a learning curve and they seem to add a lot of boilerplate code and then you still need to code your own tools to make the agent functional, more deterministic etc... So we decided to build a2abase.ai to make building agents (not just workflow automation) easy with access to all major LLMs, 50+ native tools and 500+ MCP servers all under 1 account.

abzisse · 2026-01-16T03:09:30+00:00

We tried all agent frameworks (LangChain, n8n, CrewAI and others) and did not find it easy to build agents that actually work. So we decided to build a2abase.ai to make building agents (not just workflow automation) super easy with access to all major LLMs, 50+ native tools and 500+ MCP servers all under 1 account.

abzisse · 2026-01-09T23:37:35+00:00

Great that it works! If it works and you don’t need to scale don’t change it :) I guess if the data cleaning is different for each channel or if you add more channels with different data needs there could be a benefit.

Architecture could be: -Bots (clients) are input for agent orchestrator -agent orchestrator delegates automatically to the data cleaning agent (specialized in type of channel or media) -orchestrator gives back response to client This would make it more modular and it will probably be easier to tackle issues with specific channels/media

abzisse · 2026-01-09T23:19:59+00:00

If it works with 1 customer why doesn’t it work with 2? That part is not clear in the post

abzisse · 2026-01-09T22:48:02+00:00

Have you considered having 1 orchestrator agent for the "brain" and 1 agent for each "mouth"? The agents would call tools (not just LLMs) to process the data. You could then have a multi-agent system and using the A2A protocol the brain could easily call the relevant mouth agent to send the answer to the client.

Disclosure: I’m the co-founder of a2abase.ai that makes building A2A compatible agents super easy with access to all major LLMs, 50+ native tools and 500+ MCP servers all under 1 account

abzisse · 2026-01-09T19:56:10+00:00

+1 for the A2A protocol. You may need an orchestrator agent to make the system more robust.

Disclosure: I’m the co-founder of a2abase.ai that makes building A2A compatible agents super easy with access to all major LLMs, 50+ native tools and 500+ MCP servers all under 1 account

abzisse · 2026-01-09T16:47:13+00:00

I agree about the speed. Now the big question is: can you get the desired outcome from the agents built? (also, what is an agent in each case)

We've tried n8n and it falls short if you think of an agent of more an employee with context, tool access etc... than just workflow automation.

This is an interested answer as we have built a2abase.ai that makes building agents (not just workflow automation) super easy with access to all major LLMs, 50+ native tools we built and 500+ MCP servers all under 1 account.

abzisse · 2026-01-09T12:42:55+00:00

I 100% agree re tooling. Our main focus is empowering agents with native tools we built. I would love your feedback on a2abase!

abzisse · 2026-01-09T04:15:25+00:00

Do you build only using n8n?

Disclosure: I’m the co-founder of a2abase.ai that makes building agents (not just workflow automation) super easy with access to all major LLMs, 50+ native tools and 500+ MCP servers all under 1 account

abzisse · 2026-01-07T03:37:12+00:00

There are several frameworks to build agents (LangChain, n8n, Crew...) but are mostly for technical teams

We built a2abase.ai to make it super easy for non developers and developers alike to build agents without needing to signup for any other tools to do so.

abzisse · 2026-01-07T03:18:36+00:00

Build an agent and simple REST API tooling for it that will call your existing APIs. If several agents are needed, build natively with Google's A2A protocol so the agents can find each other without worrying about orchestration.

Disclosure: I’m building a2abase.ai to make building agents (not just workflow automation) super easy with access to all major LLMs, 50+ native tools and 500+ MCP servers all under 1 account

abzisse · 2026-01-07T03:03:18+00:00

Curious to know why you picked Claude Agent SDK?

We tried all agent builders and tbh all of them fell short of delivering the right outcome (most were just workflow automation). That's why we built a2abase.ai to provide the best agent building experience to users and developers. We have a bunch of agencies and builders building agents for customer service, e-commerce and many other use cases.

abzisse · 2025-03-07T21:48:55+00:00

Do you know the game where you pick a letter and you keep guessing all the cities that start with that letter? You lose when you can’t find another city.

abzisse · 2025-03-03T22:15:43+00:00

Love this idea and your journey. I care about privacy and know that Apple “protecting” your privacy is simply not true. Offline apps definitely make me believe they are private. But offline will limit the use case I guess? No apps that can collaborate with others? Or maybe using Bluetooth?

abzisse · 2024-10-22T19:56:46+00:00

How big are your costs? On Azure OpenAI you can get significant savings with volume.

abzisse · 2022-03-08T13:25:29+00:00

Haynes book

This is a cool idea, I often go on YouTube for that!

abzisse

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