AI RESEARCH
A Two-Dimensional Framework for AI Agent Design Patterns: Cognitive Function and Execution Topology
arXiv CS.AI
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ArXi:2605.13850v1 Announce Type: new Existing frameworks for LLM-based agent architectures describe systems from a single perspective: industry guides (Anthropic, Google, LangChain) focus on execution topology -- how data flows -- while cognitive science surveys focus on cognitive function -- what the agent does. Neither axis alone disambiguates architecturally distinct systems: the same Orchestrator-Workers topology can implement Plan-and-Execute, Hierarchical Delegation, or Adversarial Verification -- three patterns with fundamentally different failure modes and design trade-offs.