Building Smarter AI Agents: Using Deterministic Code Before LLM Calls

On 2026-11-13 at 09:41, the AI section of DEV Community published an article titled "Build Smarter AI Agents: Use Deterministic Code Before Calling an LLM", presenting a practical approach for building AI Agent applications.

The article argues that developers should not default to letting an LLM make every decision in such applications. Instead, it recommends relying on deterministic code before invoking the model. The piece points out that not every problem actually calls for reasoning; some problems are resolved with plain code. When an AI agent is tasked with solving the same kind of problem over and over, handling that recurring work through deterministic code first is described as a way to address repetitive tasks more efficiently and reliably while improving the agent's overall performance. The article frames the decision as countering a tempting assumption, namely that because an LLM is already part of the application and can interpret context across a wide range of situations, it should be asked to decide every time.

At present, this is the only publicly available report on the topic, so there is no follow-up development or additional discussion to report beyond the article itself.