Find the resource for the design decision in front of you.
Engineering guides, practical checks and reusable worksheets from Sunil Mathew and The Living Craft. Start with your question, work through an example and take the result into your next design discussion.
Start where you are:
- I build agents: failure handling, memory, citations and release evidence.
- I approve or fund AI work: POC selection, agent authority and where rules are enforced.
- I run L&D or a team: a design review agenda and an employer funding case.
- I'm planning my next move: a self-review of the skills your experience already shows.
Overall design
- When a workflow is enough: decide whether the task needs an agent at all.
- Designing agentic systems: examine the decisions across a whole design.
- Agent Design Check: find unanswered questions about a system's purpose, actions, evidence and operation.
- Agent design canvas: describe the workflow and its boundaries before a review.
Scope and control
- POC Selection Tool: examine whether a use case has a credible path for further work.
- Agent Authority Review: examine which steps need code, a person or bounded agent action.
- Tool permissions guide: work through what a tool may do and who can authorise it.
- Rule Placement Audit: record where each important rule is enforced.
- Gate Routing Map: distinguish cases that should block, wait or go to a person.
Evidence and failure
- Uncertain evidence guide: work through the action to take when evidence is incomplete.
- Citation Fit Check: check whether cited evidence applies to the situation.
- Failure Triage Quiz: practise on an illustrative incident.
- Agent Failure Triage Kit: examine the route after an uncertain, failed or rejected action.
- Agent Memory Audit Kit: examine memory structure and failure cases.
- Evaluation-gates worksheet: connect a release requirement to its evidence and owner.
- Deployment checklist: clarify operating ownership and recovery responsibilities.
Model choice and cost
- Model Selection Tool: assess a candidate model for one defined step.
- Workflow Cost Limits Worksheet: record limits, enforcement and stop behaviour for one workflow.
- Cost-Ceiling Workbook: calculate cost assumptions, concurrency effects and the consequences of stopping.
- Rework Cost Check: examine retries, reviews and repeated work.
- Run-Cost Model: compare ways to complete the same job over one period.
The worksheet records the operating decision. The workbook explores its cost through a calculator and illustrative scenarios. Start with the one that answers your question.
Grow your career
Where your own judgement stands, and which skill to build next.
- The Standout Skills Self-Review: Which standout skill should I build next? A self-review that rates 16 statements on evidence, not intent, and picks one gap to close.
Take a useful structure into the next discussion
Use a design review agenda to organise a review or an architecture decision record to preserve the evidence, trade-offs and decision.
For employer sponsorship, the funding summary helps explain the learning goal and commitment.
Browse guides · Browse templates · Browse tools · Browse worksheets · Read field notes
Put the reasoning into practice
If you want to build and evaluate a learning project with Sunil, compare Agentic Systems programmes. If an existing business system needs help with one bounded design decision, discuss advisory.
For interview practice or a move towards new responsibilities, Career Preparation explains the separate one-to-one packages.