Workflows vs AI Agents vs Multi-Agent Systems: A Practical Guide for Developers (opens in new tab)

When I first started building AI applications, I kept hearing the same words everywhere: workflows, agents, and multi-agent systems. At first, they all sounded like different labels for the same thing. After all, in every case, you are still calling an LLM, sending some context, and getting something back. That assumption turns out to be one of the easiest ways to design the wrong system.