From Hype to Strong Foundations: What the Rise, Fall and Resurgence of Agents Can Teach Us About Outlasting the Cycle

2025 has been declared "the year of agents", but so were 1994, 1998, and 2016. In fact, the history of agents is a story of recurring peaks and valleys. We'll situate agents and multi-agent systems as a software paradigm alongside Objects, Actors and Microservices, examine the role LLMs and compound AI systems can play, and build a taxonomy of the various protocols and frameworks around and identify gaps enterprises need to navigate.  The core thesis: agents aren't magic, they're software. And like all good software, they need a foundation of solid engineering principles of abstraction and reliability because those who don't learn from the past are doomed to be swallowed by "The Bitter Lesson" or to re-implement JADE.