Handoffs vs. flowcharts for agents, in light of OpenAI's visual builder(blog.rowboatlabs.com)
blog.rowboatlabs.com
Handoffs vs. flowcharts for agents, in light of OpenAI's visual builder
https://blog.rowboatlabs.com/handoffs-vs-flowcharts-for-agents-in-light-of-openais-visual-builder/
Scope: We are comparing a pure visual flowchart to a handoff model built around one primitive: handoff(agent, history). Each agent takes the full conversation history H, updates it, and decides which agent should act next (or halt). The entire history travels with control, so routing happens dynamically.
Takeaways:
• Topology: flowchart = fixed graph; handoffs = graph generated at runtime from H
• State: flowchart stores state in the diagram; handoffs keep it in the shared data (H)
• Routing cost: flowchart needs explicit branches (many edges or a large router); handoffs keep routing as a small function over H
• Extensibility: flowchart adds edges; handoffs add a function
COI: We built Rowboat around handoffs. The code is open source: https://github.com/rowboatlabs/rowboat