Patterns
How to use this catalog
How to use this catalog
Orientation to the patterns catalog. Each pattern is an independent primitive that composes with the others by stacking.
Pattern shapes
Each pattern in this catalog is a reusable shape: a config sketch you can lift, combine with other patterns, and adapt to your domain. The patterns are independent primitives. Any of them can be added to a ladder without breaking the others.
The catalog does not repeat the full tutorials. See Build a ToT Ladder and Add Reflexion for end-to-end walkthroughs. This section is a reference of canonical shapes, designed for skimming and copy-paste.
Composition rules
- Patterns compose by stacking. ToT plus reflexion equals a ToT that retries the synthesis on low scores.
- Each pattern has a cost (LLM calls per execution) and a latency (LLM-rounds deep). The execution budget bounds both.
- More patterns is not better. The smallest ladder that meaningfully beats one-shot is usually the right ladder.
- Patterns combine cleanly because each occupies a distinct phase: generate, verify, refine, persist. The phases connect via field references and gates.
Cost model
Every pattern lists its cost as a function of N (the branch/sample count) and a fixed additive constant. The total cost of a composed ladder is the sum of its phases' costs.
| Pattern | LLM calls per loop | Latency (LLM rounds) |
|---|---|---|
| Tree-of-Thoughts | 2N + 1 (draft + evaluate + synthesize) | 3 |
| Reflexion | 3 (draft + critique + refine) | 3 |
| Self-Consistency | N + 1 (draft + aggregate) | 2 |
| Self-Refine | 3 (draft + issues + refine) | 3 |
| Debate | 2N + 1 (positions + rebuttals + judge) | 3 |
| Verify-then-Persist | 1 (extract only; gate and write are post-step) | 1 |
| Research Loop | up to maxRounds | up to maxRounds |
The spend ceiling (executionBudget.maxSpend) bounds the total dollar cost regardless of composition. A composed ladder that would exceed the ceiling is aborted at runtime with the best-so-far output.