INVOKE FIRST for any LangChain / LangGraph / Deep Agents agent building project before consulting other skills or writing any agent code. Required starting…
Deep Agents (top layer, harness) — batteries-included toolkit built on LangChain + LangGraph. Ships with planning, file management, subagent spawning, and memory out of the box.
LangGraph (middle layer, runtime) — low-level orchestration for durable execution, custom control flow, and stateful workflows. LangChain agents run on top of LangGraph.
LangChain (bottom layer, framework) — abstractions for models, tools, and the agent loop. Provider-agnostic, easiest to start with.
LangSmith (cross-cutting) — observability and evaluation platform. Framework-agnostic; always recommended alongside any of the above.
Higher layers depend on lower ones, but you don't need to use lower layers directly. Deep Agents gives you LangGraph's durable execution without writing graph code. LangChain gives you models and tools without managing graph edges.
Step 1 — Choose Your Tool
Evaluate these conditions in order and stop at the first match:
related skills
semantically similar in the cross-vendor index
don't have the plugin yet? install it then click "run inline in claude" again.
+clarifies the dependency hierarchy between three related frameworks without false hierarchy
+explains trade-offs between abstraction level and control (batteries-included vs manual orchestration)
+begins decision logic with clear step-1 framing before branching
weaknesses
~incomplete procedure: decision tree cuts off mid-sentence at 'stop at the first match' with no conditions actually listed
~generic trigger phrases ('any langchain/langgraph/deep agents agent building project') with no concrete signals that would initiate this skill
~lacks coverage of failure modes, version compatibility issues, or when one layer is genuinely wrong for a use case