PTO Request System¶
Let’s tackle a real-world business problem by coding a solution. An employee wants to take PTO next Thursday and Friday to enjoy a long weekend. Here’s the basic flow:
An LLM calculates the dates for next week.
The employee checks their PTO balance and submits a request.
The request goes to the manager for approval.
The manager, aware it’s a long weekend, ensures not all staff are off at once and approves based on team availability.
Once approved, the employee’s department and teammates working on the same tasks are notified.
This use case skips many details and complexities for simplicity’s sake.
PTO Business Process¶
Imagine a system where one AI Agent retrieves and updates data in a SQL database, while another processes company internal documentation. These agents need to exchange data—sometimes directing it to a specific agent, and other times broadcasting it (e.g., a notification like “approved PTO”) for multiple agents to act upon asynchronously.
As you define more agents with specialized behaviors, the system can quickly grow complex.
Agent Framework Design¶
Without a structured approach, you might end up with an unwieldy, coder-only-understood workflow resembling a full-blown SaaS product or ERP system—something you’d rather avoid reinventing, given the abundance of existing solutions.
An AI Agent framework, like AutoGen, addresses these challenges by providing a structured, reusable, and manageable way to build and scale such systems. Here’s why it makes sense:
We’ll start with a standalone implementation to keep things straightforward.