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Portrait of Scarlett Attensil.

by Scarlett Attensil

Updated tutorial available: This tutorial uses an older version of the sample code. For the latest implementation featuring Agent Graphs with visual orchestration and per-node monitoring, see Beyond n8n for Workflow Automation: Agent Graphs as Your Universal Agent Harness. The updated code is available on the tutorial/agent-graphs branch.

Overview

Build a working multi-agent system with dynamic configuration in 20 minutes using LangGraph multi-agent workflows, RAG search, and LaunchDarkly AI Configs. Part 1 of 3 of the series: Chaos to Clarity: Defensible AI Systems That Deliver on Your Goals You’ve been there: your AI chatbot works great in testing, then production hits and GPT-4 costs spiral out of control. You switch to Claude, but now European users need different privacy rules. Every change means another deploy, more testing, and crossed fingers that nothing breaks. The teams shipping faster? They control AI behavior dynamically instead of hardcoding everything. This series shows you how to build LangGraph multi-agent workflows that get their intelligence from RAG search through your business documents. These workflows are enhanced with MCP tools for live external data and controlled through LaunchDarkly AI Configs—all without needing to deploy code changes.

What This Series Covers

  • Part 1 (this post): Build a working multi-agent system with dynamic configuration in 20 minutes
  • Part 2: Add advanced features like segment targeting, MCP tool integration, and cost optimization
  • Part 3: Run production A/B experiments to prove what actually works
By the end, you’ll have a system that measures its own performance and adapts based on user data instead of guesswork.

What You’ll Build Today

In the next 20 minutes, you’ll have a LangGraph multi-agent system with:
  • Supervisor Agent: Orchestrates workflow between specialized agents
  • Security Agent: Detects PII and sensitive information
  • Support Agent: Answers questions using your business documents
  • Dynamic Control: Change models, tools, and behavior through LaunchDarkly without code changes

Prerequisites

You’ll need:
  • Python 3.9+ with uv package manager (install uv)
  • LaunchDarkly account (sign up for free)
  • OpenAI API key (required for RAG architecture embeddings)
  • Anthropic API key (required for Claude models) or OpenAI API key (for GPT models)

Step 1: Clone and Configure (2 minutes)

First, let’s get everything running locally. We’ll explain what each piece does as we build.
First, you need to get your LaunchDarkly SDK key by creating a project:
  1. Sign up for LaunchDarkly at app.launchdarkly.com (free account).
If you’re a brand new user, after signing up for an account, you’ll need to verify your email address. You can skip through the new user onboarding flow after that.
  1. Find projects on the side bar:

Sidebar Projects

Projects sidebar in the LaunchDarkly app UI.

  1. Create a new project called “multi-agent-chatbot”
🎯 Use exact names for Part 2 compatibility:
  • Project: multi-agent-chatbot
  • AI Configs: supervisor-agent, security-agent, support-agent
  • Tools: search_v2, reranking
  • Variations: supervisor-basic, pii-detector, rag-search-enhanced
New Project

Creating a new project in LaunchDarkly.

  1. Get your SDK key: ⚙️ (bottom of sidebar) → Projects → multi-agent-chatbot → ⚙️ (to the right) → Environments → Production → SDK key this is your LD_SDK_KEY

SDK Key

Location of the SDK key in LaunchDarkly project settings.

Now edit .env with your keys:
This sets up a LangGraph application that uses LaunchDarkly to control AI behavior. Think of it like swapping actors, directors, even props mid-performance without stopping the show. Do not check the .env into your source control. Keep those secrets safe!

Step 2: Add Your Business Knowledge (2 minutes)

The system includes a sample reinforcement learning textbook. Replace it with your own documents for your specific domain.
Document types that work well:
  • Legal: Contracts, case law, compliance guidelines
  • Healthcare: Protocols, research papers, care guidelines
  • SaaS: API docs, user guides, troubleshooting manuals
  • E-commerce: Product catalogs, policies, FAQs
These documents will serve as the knowledge base for your RAG search, providing business-specific context to your agents.

Step 3: Initialize Your Knowledge Base (2 minutes)

Turn your documents into searchable RAG knowledge:
This builds your RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) foundation using OpenAI’s text-embedding model and FAISS vector database. RAG converts documents into vector embeddings that capture semantic meaning rather than just keywords, making search actually understand context.

Step 4: Define Your Tools (3 minutes)

Define the search tools your agents will use. In the LaunchDarkly app sidebar, click Library in the AI section. On the following screen, click the Tools tab, then Create tool.
Library

AI Library section in the LaunchDarkly dashboard sidebar.

Create the RAG vector search tool:

Note: we will be creating a simple search_v1 during part 3 when we learn about experimentation. Create a tool using the following configuration:
Key:
Semantic search using vector embeddings
reranking
supervisor-basic
claude-3-7-sonnet-latest
pii-detector
claude-3-7-sonnet-latest
This agent detects PII and provides detailed redaction information, showing exactly what sensitive data was found and how it would be handled for compliance and transparency. Remember to switch to the Targeting tab and enable this agent the same way we did for the supervisor - edit the default rule to serve your pii-detector variation and save it.

Create the Support Agent

Finally, create support-agent
variation:
Click Attach tools. select: ✅ reranking ✅ search_v2 Goal or task:
bash

Terminal 1: Start the backend

uv run uvicorn api.main:app —reload —port 8000
bash

Terminal 2: Launch the UI

uv run streamlit run ui/chat_interface.py —server.port 8501
To:
  1. Click Save changes
  2. In your chat, ask a complex question that would normally trigger multiple searches
  3. What you’ll notice: The agent now makes at most 2 tool calls, forcing it to be more selective about its searches

Feature 3: Change Agent Behavior

Transform your support agent into a research specialist:
  1. In the support-agent config, locate the Goal or task field
  2. Replace the existing instructions with:
  3. Click Save changes
  4. Test with a question like “What are the best practices for feature flags?”
  5. What you’ll notice: The agent now performs multiple searches, explains its search strategy, and provides more thorough, research-oriented responses
All changes take effect immediately - no deployment, no restart, no downtime. Your users experience the updates in real-time.

Understanding What You Built

Your LangGraph multi-agent system with RAG includes: **
  1. LangGraph Orchestration** The supervisor agent uses LangGraph state management to route requests intelligently based on content analysis.
**
  1. Privacy Protection** The supervisor agent uses LangGraph state management to route requests intelligently. This separation allows you to assign a trusted model to the security and supervisor agents and consider on a less-trusted model for the more expensive support agent at a reduced risk of PII exposure.
**
  1. RAG Knowledge System** The support agent combines LangGraph tool chaining with your RAG system for semantic document search and reranking.
**
  1. Runtime Control** LaunchDarkly controls both LangGraph behavior and RAG parameters without code changes.

What’s Next?

Your multi-agent system is running with dynamic control and ready for optimization. In Part 2, we’ll add:
  • Geographic-based privacy rules (strict for EU, standard for other)
  • MCP tools for external data
  • Business tier configurations (free, paid)
  • Cost optimization strategies
In Part 3, we’ll run A/B experiments to prove which configurations actually work best with real data.

Try This Now

Experiment with:
  1. Different Instructions: Make agents more helpful, more cautious, or more thorough
  2. Tool Combinations: Add/remove tools to see impact on quality
  3. Model Comparisons: Try different models for different agents
  4. Cost Limits: Find the sweet spot between quality and cost
Every change is instant, measurable, and reversible.

Key Takeaways

  • Multi-agent systems work best when each agent has a specific role
  • Dynamic configuration handles changing requirements better than hardcoding
  • LaunchDarkly AI Configs control and change AI behavior without requiring deployments
  • Start simple and add complexity as you learn what works
Ready for more? Continue to Part 2: Smart AI Agent Targeting with MCP Tools → Explore the LaunchDarkly MCP Server - enable AI agents to access feature flag configurations, user segments, and experimentation data directly through the Model Context Protocol.
Questions? Issues? Reach out at aiproduct@launchdarkly.com or open an issue in the GitHub repo.