However, AWS claims that during its internal use of Strands Agents, its developers encountered issues while deploying agents built with the SDK.

The SDK’s reliance on model-driven reasoning, according to AWS, often produced unpredictable outcomes once agents hit production workloads, leading to inconsistent results, misinterpreted instructions, and high-maintenance prompt engineering — all of which were impediments to adoption at scale.

To bypass these challenges and yet avoid writing lines of custom code, AWS came out with Agent SOPs or Standard Operating Procedures, which are standardized natural language instructions combined with RFC 2119 keywords, such as “MUST”, “SHOULD”, and “MAY”, that offer a way for developers to guide agents to generate a desired workflow.