Definition
Plain language
An open-source framework for orchestrating teams of AI agents with named roles.
As stated in the literature
A Python framework for building multi-agent LLM systems with explicit role and task abstractions, commonly used in hierarchical agent deployments.
Why it matters: It's a common starting point for teams building multi-agent applications, so its abstractions shape how a lot of production agent systems are structured.
For example, a CrewAI script defines a 'researcher' agent, a 'writer' agent, and a 'fact-checker' agent and routes a task through them in sequence.
Heard on the show
“AutoGen, LangGraph, CrewAI — they encode coordination in prompts and workflow graphs without formal semantics.”Episode 034 — Catching Multi-Agent Deadlocks Before Deployment With a 40-Year-Old Tool