What is an agentic system?
Ask 20 vendors, and you will get 20 answers.
At Akka, we've struggled to define exactly 'what' an agentic system is, as it is composed of so many things: models, agents, APIs, moving data, orchestration, memory, integration, semantic knowledge, and so on.
Perhaps, then, it's easier to define an agentic system by its behaviors:
1. It is a system that infuses (unreliable) AI into your apps, and:
2. It is a system that continuously builds trust.
Trust, though, is a thorny problem as it spans security, reliability, performance, user satisfaction, and the business. How do you trust a system that is based upon unreliable models?
Akka, we are introducing a reference architecture for agentic systems - reliable systems that build trust while depending upon unreliable LLMs.
There are many moving parts - animated - for your enjoyment.
.. agents
... prompts
.... structured data responses
... token-oriented object notation
.. external and semantic data integration
... enrichment loops and MCP tools
.... immutable tracing and OpenInference
... guardrails
.. authenticated agent interactions
... compressed, injected, optimized agent memory
.... sharded memory with cluster-based resilience
... AI asset registry and dynamic templates
.. PII sanitizers
... orchestration, steps, workflow, retries, recovery
.... adaptive, agent-based decisioning in orchestration
... control loops
.. stream processing for adaptive and ambient AI
... event-driven feedback loops for improving agents
.... evaluation and LLM-as-a-judge patterns
... APIs, endpoints, interrupts, and control flow
.. MCP servers
... domain objects, knowledge base, and static typing for safety
.... domain-integrated context engineering
... actor-based concurrency with location transparency
.. zero-trust agent networks with fine-grained RBAC
... agent registry for policy, metrics and governance
.... auditable agentic SBOM
... system clustering with resilience and scale out
.. agentic regions for agent sovereignty, multi-region HA / DR
... AGNTCY for agent advertising, cards, and registration
.... networks of cooperating agents with A2A and ACP
... AI gateway and proxies for intelligent agent routing
.. agent composition with HITL patterns
... workflows that can make cost :: perf :: accuracy decisioning
At Akka we are making this simple. Our Akka Agentic AI Platform makes it simple to get into production, we have a form of building continuous trust to keep you in production (indefinitely) safely, and then we scale cost effectively sometimes as much as 90% lower infrastructure costs vs. Python.
Keep learning about Agentic AI, and when your AI has an SLA that matters, give us a call. We'll be there with you shoulder-to-shoulder.
