Integration patterns for agents: APIs, webhooks, event-driven workflows, chat interfaces, and enterprise identity.

Integration patterns

Overview

Integrations are often the hardest part of production agent deployments. The key is to standardize inputs/outputs, enforce authentication and permissions, and keep tool surfaces small and well-governed.

Key topics

  • Webhook-triggered runs with structured payload schemas.
  • Event-driven orchestration and queue-based processing.
  • Chat integrations with scoped permissions and safe commands.
  • SSO and service-to-service authentication patterns.
  • Audit and observability integration (centralized logs and traces).

Common pitfalls

  • Unstructured inputs that force the model to guess parameters.
  • Exposing too many tools and endpoints to the agent runtime.
  • Lack of correlation IDs and trace propagation across systems.
  • Authentication shortcuts that bypass enterprise policies.

Recommended practices

  • Standardize contracts (OpenAPI, JSON schemas) for tools and events.
  • Apply least privilege and approval gates for write actions.
  • Propagate correlation IDs through all calls and logs.
  • Test integrations with failure injection and replay scenarios.

This page is intended to be actionable for engineering teams. For platform-specific details, cross-reference /platform/agents, /platform/orchestration, and /platform/knowledge.