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AI
LLM
React
AI Agent
Artificial Intelligence
41 min read Just now
A no-framework tour of the loop, the protocol, and the production gap hiding underneath every “agentic” product you’ve used this year
Estimated reading time: 24–28 minutes
Table of Contents #
- Introduction: The Question Nobody Answers Cleanly
- The One-Shot Call vs. the Loop
- ReAct: The Pattern Underneath Almost Every Agent
- The System Prompt Is the Steering Wheel
- Message History Is the Agent’s Only Memory
- Tool Calling: Teaching a Model to Ask for Help
- Building the Loop for Real
- Swapping the Brain: Running Agents on Local Models
- The Model Matters More Than the Code
- Mixed Mode: Local Orchestration, Cloud Delegation
- Growing the Toolbox — and Hitting a Wall
- Model Context Protocol: Why Every Agent Needed a USB-C Port
- MCP Client: Borrowing Tools You Didn’t Build
- MCP Server: Lending Your Tools to Everyone Else
- Where the Naive Loop Breaks: Errors, Retries, and Trust
source & further reading
pub.towardsai.net — original article
How Qdrant Reduced RAG Token Costs by 67% with Native ColBERT Reranking
Token Bloat, Not Model IQ
Computer Use Agents: How AI Operates Through Real User Interfaces