Why Simple Wins: How Over-Engineering an AWS Governance Agent Led Back to Basics

Building production AI systems requires more than raw LLM capability—it demands thoughtful abstraction design. This technical narrative exposes how teams can fall into the trap of architectural over-complexity, discovering through three iterations that directly exposing APIs to LLMs creates token waste and inconsistency, yet adding deterministic orchestration layers introduces brittle maintenance burdens. The lesson challenges the industry's assumption that more sophisticated control yields better results.