Generative AI vs. Agents: A Simple Litmus Test

Eric.Irwin@gmail.com (Eric Irwin) — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’m writing this because I’ve made the mistake myself. I assumed everything should be an agent. If there was a problem to solve, my first instinct was, let’s build an agent for that. It took running headfirst into the tradeoffs — performance, debugging headaches, and unnecessary complexity — for me to realize that not everything benefits from being agentic.

And honestly, this isn’t a new struggle. We’ve seen the same pattern with AI more broadly: reaching for it to solve problems that are often handled better with simpler, more traditional approaches. Now, agents and agentic systems are following the same trajectory — being turned to as the “solution” even when they’re not the right fit. Or at least not the immediate.

Agentic-Ai on Eric Irwin

Generative AI vs. Agents: A Simple Litmus Test