As long as each action has proper validation and returns meaningful error messages, you don't need to even change the control flow. The agent will typically understand what went wrong, and attempt to correct it in the next "ReAction".
I've been refactoring some agents to use "functions" and so far it seems to be a HUGE improvement in reliability vs the "Return JSON matching this format" approach. Most impactful is that fact that "3.5-turbo" will now reliability return JSON (before you'd be forced to use GPT-4 for an ReAct style agent of modest complexity).
My agents also seem to be better at following other instructions now that the noise of the response format is gone (of course it's still there, but in a way it has been specifically trained on). This could also just be a result of the improvements to the system prompt though.
ReAct Setup Prompt (goal + available actions) -> Agent "ReAction" -> Parse & Execute Action -> Send Action Response (success or error) -> Agent "ReAction" -> repeat
As long as each action has proper validation and returns meaningful error messages, you don't need to even change the control flow. The agent will typically understand what went wrong, and attempt to correct it in the next "ReAction".
I've been refactoring some agents to use "functions" and so far it seems to be a HUGE improvement in reliability vs the "Return JSON matching this format" approach. Most impactful is that fact that "3.5-turbo" will now reliability return JSON (before you'd be forced to use GPT-4 for an ReAct style agent of modest complexity).
My agents also seem to be better at following other instructions now that the noise of the response format is gone (of course it's still there, but in a way it has been specifically trained on). This could also just be a result of the improvements to the system prompt though.