Since it’s Christmas, I ended up thinking through a Christmas-themed use case, mostly as a way to explain how I approach agent design beyond the foundational layer.
The theme itself doesn’t matter much. It just gives you a nice mix of:
- vague, emotional intent (“I just want this sorted”)
- hard constraints (budget, deadlines)
- multiple domains at once
When I think about designing an agent here, I’m less focused on responses and more on what components are actually required. For example:
- an analyzer that turns messy input into something structured (e.g., “budget-sensitive,” “family of 5,” “fixed deadline”)
- a planner that converts that into a concrete workflow (gift planning, reminders, budget tracking)
- small, focused workers (one that suggests gifts under a price cap, another that tracks cumulative spend)
- a validator that can say “this doesn’t work” before anything is shown
What’s been interesting for me is how much value you get from automating the build of these components, like prompt scaffolding, baseline RAG setup, and eval wiring. It removes a lot of boring glue work while keeping the system structured and easier to trust.
What would be your Christmas themed Agent 😁😉 and how would you approach it?
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