#543: Deep Agents: LangChain's SDK for Agents That Plan and Delegate

When you type a question into ChatGPT, the model only has what you typed to work with. But tools like Claude Code can plan, iterate, test, and recover from mistakes. They work more like we do. The difference is the agent harness: Planning tools, file system access, sub-agents, and carefully crafted system prompts that turn a raw LLM into something genuinely capable. Sydney Runkle is back on Talk Python representing LangChain and their new open source library, Deep Agents: A framework for building your own deep agents with plain Python functions, middleware hooks, and MCP support. This is how the magic works under the hood. Episode sponsors Sentry Error Monitoring, Code talkpython26 Agentic AI Course Talk Python Courses Links from the show Guest Sydney Runkle: github.com Claude Code uses: x.com Deep Research: openai.com Manus: manus.im Blog post announcement: blog.langchain.com Claudes system prompt: github.com sub agents: docs.anthropic.com the quick start: docs.langchain.com CLIs: github.com Talk Python's CLI: talkpython.fm custom tools: docs.langchain.com DeepAgents Examples: github.com Custom Middleware: docs.langchain.com Built in middleware: docs.langchain.com Improving Deep Agents with harness engineering: blog.langchain.com Prebuilt middleware: docs.langchain.com Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com Episode #543 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/543 Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm Theme Song: Developer Rap 🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong ---== Don't be a stranger ==--- YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython Bluesky: @talkpython.fm Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org X.com: @talkpython Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org Michael on X.com: @mkennedy