Looking for guidance on AI agent development frameworks
I’m pretty new to building AI agents and trying to figure out which framework would be the smartest choice to start with. I keep hearing about LangChain everywhere but I’m wondering if it’s actually the top choice or if there are better options out there for someone just getting into this stuff.
Some specific things I’m curious about:
Is LangChain really as good as people say or is it just popular?
Are there simpler frameworks that might be better for learning the basics?
What would experienced developers recommend for someone starting from scratch?
I don’t want to waste time learning something that’s overly complicated or not industry standard. Any recommendations or personal experiences would be super helpful. Thanks in advance for any advice you can share!
skip frameworks completely at first - just use the raw openai python sdk for a week or two. you’ll actually understand what’s happening under the hood instead of getting lost in abstraction layers. langchain will make way more sense when you pick it up later.
I’ve been there - struggled with all the traditional frameworks when starting out. LangChain and CrewAI still require tons of code and manual connection handling.
Visual automation changed everything for me. Instead of fighting documentation and debugging API calls, I build AI agents with drag-and-drop workflows. You actually see your agent logic flow step by step.
Built my first working agent in 30 minutes - would’ve taken days coding traditionally. The visual approach makes data flow crystal clear between AI calls, databases, and external services.
You get error handling, scheduling, and monitoring built-in without writing infrastructure code. Understanding agents through visual builders makes jumping to code frameworks much easier later.
Started with CrewAI six months ago and it’s way more beginner-friendly than LangChain. The docs are cleaner and agent workflows actually make sense when you’re learning. LangChain has more features and community support, but that’s almost a problem at first - there’s so much stuff you can’t tell what you need vs. what’s just noise. CrewAI makes you think about agent roles and tasks in a structured way, which really helped me nail the basics. Once I got those concepts down, jumping to more complex frameworks was easy.
hey, i totally get your struggle! langchain can be pretty overwhelming for newbies. maybe start with just the basic OpenAI API calls – it’ll give you a solid foundation. once you’re comfy, then check out semantic kernel if you’re into .NET. good luck!