AGENTIC PATTERN ATLAS

Choose the shape of the work first.

Execution patterns describe how work moves. Governance overlays describe how authority, evidence, failure, and recovery constrain that work. They are related—but they are not one flat list.

01 / PROBLEM

What must the work do?

Order, parallelism, competition, recursion, recovery, and shared state create different failure modes.

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02 / APPROACH

Select a topology.

Choose the smallest execution structure that matches the dependency shape.

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03 / SOLUTION

Add governance overlays.

Apply authority, evidence, safety, and lifecycle controls required by the risk.

EXECUTION TOPOLOGIES

How does the work move?

SEQUENTIAL

Pipeline

Problem: Work must proceed in a strict order and partial outputs must not leak forward.
Use when: Each stage depends on a validated predecessor output.
Avoid when: Tasks are independent and waiting only adds latency.

DURABLE SIDE EFFECTS

Recoverable work

Problem: A multi-step run creates external side effects that cannot be atomically rolled back.
Use when: Every consequential step can declare a recovery or compensating action.
Avoid when: The work is atomic or has no durable consequence.

GOVERNANCE OVERLAYS

Controls compose with the topology.

A pipeline can use a circuit breaker. A fan-out can require lineage and quorum. A recursive loop can escalate. These controls are not alternative work shapes.

Authority & safety

Control who may delegate, act, escalate, retry, or enter degraded operation.

Evidence & decisions

Make lineage, independent review, qualification, promotion, and outcomes inspectable.

Portability & learning

Preserve source truth while targets, deployments, and improved candidates change.

FROM PATTERN TO IMPLEMENTATION