Ask HN: Anyone using OpenAI's Agent SDK in production?

8•sukit•7mo ago

I'm exploring building a simple agent-based app and came across OpenAI's Agent SDK: https://openai.github.io/openai-agents-js/ . From what I understand, it wraps a lot of functionality — like the agent loop, function calling, and integration with the OpenAI MCP server — which could potentially save me a lot of work compared to using the plain OpenAI SDK.

However, I'm wondering:

Is the Agent SDK too abstracted or hard to debug?

Has anyone actually used it in a real production app yet?

Would I be better off just implementing the logic myself on top of the plain OpenAI SDK for more control and transparency?

Appreciate any insights.

Comments

android521•7mo ago

you're better off just implementing the logic yourself as it is more flexible.

codingwagie•7mo ago

OpenAI SDK is much simpler to use and understand than langchain etc. I havent deployed really complicated agents, but I have a number of simple use cases that work just fine

pancsta•7mo ago

I agree with the debugging part - we need a new approach to handle these abstractions, and a regular code-stepping or reading logs isn't enough in the case of agents. It's all about managing state, and most ppl here say to avoid it. What I say is that if you go all-in and unify the architecture from the bottom layer, it's actually easier in the long run, but you'll need dedicated devtools for that.

This is precisely why I've created AI-gent Workflows (launched on HN today [0]), which comes with a purpose-built state machine and devtools. Unlike LangGraph, it starts already in the lowest layer and everything is state-based. You can time travel and even modify states of a live agent.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44386314