LangGraph

LangGraph is LangChain's low-level orchestration framework for building stateful, long-running, multi-agent AI workflows using directed graph architectures (inspired by Pregel/Beam and NetworkX). It models agents as nodes in a graph, with edges controlling flow — enabling cycles, conditional branching, parallel execution, human-in-the-loop, and subgraph composition that linear chains cannot express.

This skill covers all major patterns for building and deploying LangGraph systems: core graph architecture, the three canonical multi-agent patterns (supervisor, swarm, hierarchical), persistence and state management, production debugging, and evaluation methodology.

Before you begin: Install dependencies:

pip install langgraph langchain langchain-openai langsmith

Quick Start

Create your first LangGraph agent in under 10 lines:

from langgraph.graph import StateGraph, MessagesState, START, END

def hello_agent(state: MessagesState):
    return {"messages": [{"role": "ai", "content": "Hello, world!"}]}

graph = StateGraph(MessagesState)
graph.add_node("agent", hello_agent)
graph.add_edge(START, "agent")
graph.add_edge("agent", END)
graph = graph.compile()

graph.invoke({"messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "hi!"}]})

Next steps:

1. Use the Pattern Selection Guide below to choose supervisor, swarm, or hierarchical architecture — each pattern links to its recommended template
2. Load the corresponding reference file for the deep pattern walkthrough
3. Use the Choosing Your Starting Point table below to pick scaffold, template, or reference based on your task
4. For a complete runnable example matching your pattern, use the linked template in assets/templates/

Design Principles — These Govern Every Graph Decision

1. State is the source of truth — all inter-node communication happens through state, not through side channels or global variables.
2. Nodes are pure-ish — a node receives state, does work, returns updates. It should not depend on state that isn't passed to it.
3. Reducers prevent conflicts — any state key written by multiple nodes in parallel MUST have a reducer.
4. Start simple — a single agent with good prompts beats a multi-agent system with bad routing. Add agents only when a single prompt or toolset becomes unwieldy.
5. Use Send() for dynamic fan-out — when you don't know how many workers you'll need at compile time, spawn them dynamically from the orchestrator node.
6. Subgraph state isolation — subgraphs with different state schemas need a wrapper function to transform state at the boundary. Shared-schema subgraphs can be added directly as nodes.

When to Reach For This

Pattern Selection Guide

Choosing Your Starting Point

Core Primitives

LangGraph uses two APIs:

Both APIs produce the same compiled graph — choose based on how much control you need.

Key Gotchas

• Subgraph persistence defaults to per-invocation — each subgraph call starts fresh. Set checkpointer=True for per-thread memory, checkpointer=False for fully stateless.
• Per-thread subgraphs cannot run in parallel — same-namespace checkpoint conflicts. Use ToolCallLimitMiddleware or disable parallel tool calls.
• The supervisor bottleneck — every interaction requires a routing LLM call, even for obvious intents. Add a fast-path classifier (keyword matching or small model) for unambiguous requests.
• Swarm ping-pong — no natural recursion guard. Track handoff_count in state and hard-limit at 3, then escalate to human or fallback agent.
• Lost messages on handoff — Command.update must include paired messages from the specialist's tool-calling loop, or the next agent sees malformed history.
• State access from parent to subgraph — subgraphs manage their own checkpoint namespace. Use Store for cross-graph-boundary data.
• Checkpoint bloat — long conversations accumulate checkpoints. Prune periodically or set retention policies on DB-backed checkpointers.
• No auto-load-on-install — skills aren't auto-discovered at session start by name mention. The agent must explicitly call skill_view(name='langgraph') to load this skill.

Reference Files

Scripts