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langchain-architecture

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by wshobson ยท part of wshobson/agents

Design LLM applications using LangChain 1.x and LangGraph for agents, memory, and tool integration. Use when building LangChain applications, implementing AI agents, or creating complex LLM workflows.

๐Ÿงฉ One of 7 skills in the wshobson/agents package โ€” works on its own, and pairs well with its siblings.

This is the playbook your agent receives when the skill activates โ€” you don't need to read it to use the skill, but it's here to audit before installing.

LangChain & LangGraph Architecture

Master modern LangChain 1.x and LangGraph for building sophisticated LLM applications with agents, state management, memory, and tool integration.

When to Use This Skill

  • Building autonomous AI agents with tool access
  • Implementing complex multi-step LLM workflows
  • Managing conversation memory and state
  • Integrating LLMs with external data sources and APIs
  • Creating modular, reusable LLM application components
  • Implementing document processing pipelines
  • Building production-grade LLM applications

Package Structure (LangChain 1.x)

langchain (1.2.x)         # High-level orchestration
langchain-core (1.2.x)    # Core abstractions (messages, prompts, tools)
langchain-community       # Third-party integrations
langgraph                 # Agent orchestration and state management
langchain-openai          # OpenAI integrations
langchain-anthropic       # Anthropic/Claude integrations
langchain-voyageai        # Voyage AI embeddings
langchain-pinecone        # Pinecone vector store

Core Concepts

1. LangGraph Agents

LangGraph is the standard for building agents in 2026. It provides:

Key Features:

  • StateGraph: Explicit state management with typed state
  • Durable Execution: Agents persist through failures
  • Human-in-the-Loop: Inspect and modify state at any point
  • Memory: Short-term and long-term memory across sessions
  • Checkpointing: Save and resume agent state

Agent Patterns:

  • ReAct: Reasoning + Acting with create_react_agent
  • Plan-and-Execute: Separate planning and execution nodes
  • Multi-Agent: Supervisor routing between specialized agents
  • Tool-Calling: Structured tool invocation with Pydantic schemas

2. State Management

LangGraph uses TypedDict for explicit state:

from typing import Annotated, TypedDict
from langgraph.graph import MessagesState

# Simple message-based state
class AgentState(MessagesState):
    """Extends MessagesState with custom fields."""
    context: Annotated[list, "retrieved documents"]

# Custom state for complex agents
class CustomState(TypedDict):
    messages: Annotated[list, "conversation history"]
    context: Annotated[dict, "retrieved context"]
    current_step: str
    results: list

3. Memory Systems

Modern memory implementations:

  • ConversationBufferMemory: Stores all messages (short conversations)
  • ConversationSummaryMemory: Summarizes older messages (long conversations)
  • ConversationTokenBufferMemory: Token-based windowing
  • VectorStoreRetrieverMemory: Semantic similarity retrieval
  • LangGraph Checkpointers: Persistent state across sessions

4. Document Processing

Loading, transforming, and storing documents:

Components:

  • Document Loaders: Load from various sources
  • Text Splitters: Chunk documents intelligently
  • Vector Stores: Store and retrieve embeddings
  • Retrievers: Fetch relevant documents

5. Callbacks & Tracing

LangSmith is the standard for observability:

  • Request/response logging
  • Token usage tracking
  • Latency monitoring
  • Error tracking
  • Trace visualization

Detailed patterns and worked examples

Detailed pattern documentation lives in references/details.md. Read that file when the navigation tier above is insufficient.

Testing Strategies

import pytest
from unittest.mock import AsyncMock, patch

@pytest.mark.asyncio
async def test_agent_tool_selection():
    """Test agent selects correct tool."""
    with patch.object(llm, 'ainvoke') as mock_llm:
        mock_llm.return_value = AsyncMock(content="Using search_database")

        result = await agent.ainvoke({
            "messages": [("user", "search for documents")]
        })

        # Verify tool was called
        assert "search_database" in str(result)

@pytest.mark.asyncio
async def test_memory_persistence():
    """Test memory persists across invocations."""
    config = {"configurable": {"thread_id": "test-thread"}}

    # First message
    await agent.ainvoke(
        {"messages": [("user", "Remember: the code is 12345")]},
        config
    )

    # Second message should remember
    result = await agent.ainvoke(
        {"messages": [("user", "What was the code?")]},
        config
    )

    assert "12345" in result["messages"][-1].content

Performance Optimization

1. Caching with Redis

from langchain_community.cache import RedisCache
from langchain_core.globals import set_llm_cache
import redis

redis_client = redis.Redis.from_url("redis://localhost:6379")
set_llm_cache(RedisCache(redis_client))

2. Async Batch Processing

import asyncio
from langchain_core.documents import Document

async def process_documents(documents: list[Document]) -> list:
    """Process documents in parallel."""
    tasks = [process_single(doc) for doc in documents]
    return await asyncio.gather(*tasks)

async def process_single(doc: Document) -> dict:
    """Process a single document."""
    chunks = text_splitter.split_documents([doc])
    embeddings = await embeddings_model.aembed_documents(
        [c.page_content for c in chunks]
    )
    return {"doc_id": doc.metadata.get("id"), "embeddings": embeddings}

3. Connection Pooling

from langchain_pinecone import PineconeVectorStore
from pinecone import Pinecone

# Reuse Pinecone client
pc = Pinecone(api_key=os.environ["PINECONE_API_KEY"])
index = pc.Index("my-index")

# Create vector store with existing index
vectorstore = PineconeVectorStore(index=index, embedding=embeddings)