Three pipeline patterns that replace LLM agents for most production tasks

A software engineering post on DEV Community argues that most tasks defaulting to LLM agent loops can be handled more efficiently with fixed pipeline shapes. The author identifies three patterns — linear chains, classifier-then-handoff, and a third shape — where the full execution flowchart can be drawn before any model call is made. Unlike agents, these pipelines make multiple LLM calls without allowing the model to decide at runtime which step comes next, avoiding quadratic token costs and unpredictable failure surfaces. A key diagnostic offered is that if tracing real agent runs shows the 'decide what's next' step picks the same path over 95% of the time, the loop is redundant and should be replaced with an explicit branch. The piece is part of a broader field-notes series focused on building LLM agents that hold up under production conditions.